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The doctor Castor San Quintín Muñoz, head of Radiology at the Pediatric Hospital of Camagüey and a mentor to generations of doctors in the province, is experiencing a true hospital nightmare.
After suffering a hip fracture, he became trapped in a cycle of delays, extreme precarity, and avoidable risks within the very healthcare system to which he has devoted his life, as reported by independent journalist José Luis Tan Estrada.
Tan Estrada described the specialist as a "teacher of teachers," an academic guide and a role model for hundreds of students who are now practicing thanks to his rigor and dedication.
However, he emphasized that neither his reputation nor his career have been enough to protect him from the collapse of healthcare in Camagüey, which he now experiences firsthand in the ordeal he is going through following his accident.
It all began when the doctor suffered a fall that resulted in a hip fracture.
From that moment on, what should have been a quick and organized care turned into a calvary: the doctor had to wait hours for an ambulance to be transferred and admitted to the Orthopedic Room of the Provincial Hospital of Camagüey, where he awaited corrective surgery, positioned as the third patient on the surgical list, according to the journalist's account.
When the moment finally came to operate on him, he was already bunder the effects of anesthesia, what his colleagues described as “the inconceivable” happened.
A piece of the operating room ceiling gave way and fell into the sterile area, contaminating it completely.
Tan Estrada captures the alarmed reaction of the medical staff, who wondered what would have happened if the surgeon had already begun the operation.
“Imagine if it had already been opened”, they recount, referring to the risk of a serious infection or a greater tragedy.
The operation had to be immediately suspended, and the intervention was postponed until Monday, without — according to the complaint — any clear alternatives or concrete guarantees being provided to the patient, who was left once again waiting in a room that does not meet adequate conditions.
Far from improving, the situation deteriorated even further as the hours passed.
A downpour in the afternoon turned the doctor's admission into an episode that Tan Estrada describes as an act of indignity.
The doctor ended up getting soaked inside the hospital itself, confined to a cubicle in deplorable conditions, unsuitable for any patient and "even more unacceptable in the case of a doctor who has devoted his entire life to public service."
For the journalist, the case of Dr. Castor San Quintín is much more than an isolated incident: it exposes the neglect and dangerous precariousness that characterize the Cuban healthcare system today, and it is particularly painful because it shows that even its best professionals —those who have sustained hospitals, classrooms, and shifts for decades— are not safe from institutional abandonment.
Tan Estrada argues that what this renowned specialist is facing today demands immediate responses and actions, not only in terms of infrastructure —repairing roofs, securing operating rooms, ensuring ambulances— but also in terms of human dignity and respect.
In his view, the country cannot afford to continue treating its doctors "as if they were dispensable," and the ordeal of Dr. Castor San Quintín has become a painful symbol of that decline.
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