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The Cuban doctor Yonardo Fonseca Mesa published a strong statement this week on his profile regarding an incident he experienced at his hospital while trying to take the elevator to operate on two cancer patients.
The episode began before reaching the operating room. Fonseca Mesa described having endured a rough night without power, a morning without breakfast because he has no gas, no electricity, nor solar panels, and having to fight in a "creative" way to get to his workplace.
Once inside the hospital, as he entered the elevator heading to the fifth floor, an official he claimed to have never seen in his life ordered him to get off and take the stairs instead.
"It turns out that a 'head of trivial matters' (who I had never seen in my life) had the audacity to tell me that I should get off and use the stairs because, according to him, they were 'orders from the hospital director,' and that this contraption was 'only for patients,'" he recounted.
The surgeon himself described the scene with stark realism in his post:
"Today, after a rough night of blackouts and a morning without breakfast (because I have neither gas nor electricity nor solar panels), after struggling in a 'creative' way to find a way to get to the place where they say I still work, I enter the elevator to try to reach the fifth floor and the room, where two cancer patients were waiting for their surgeries."
According to the account of the event, the order was not only absurd but also deeply offensive given the context in which it occurred.
Fonseca Mesa explained that, despite the tension of the moment, he decided not to comply with the instruction.
"Although the situation became a bit tense, of course I didn't back down; I arrived at my classroom and did my best for those two people who were not at fault at all," he described.
The complaint, however, was not limited to the specific incident.
The doctor took advantage of his publication to attack the salary conditions and the treatment that professionals in the sector receive.
"I'm going to tell you something, 'bosses' that I know are secretly watching my profile: the crap you pay me (8800 pesos = 17 dollars) isn't even enough to buy toilet paper," she said forcefully.
In one of the text's most poignant fragments, he emphasized: "every day there are countless times that I curse this garbage", he said, revealing the level of frustration accumulated over years of hardship.
The surgeon also reported the impossibility of leaving his position despite having requested it repeatedly: "I have been asking for 'release' for almost five years, and they refuse to let me go."
In a warning tone, he concluded with a direct message to the hospital authorities:
"I suggest you put my photo in the elevators or distribute it to all the single-minded people assigned to that embarrassing task, because the next time something like this happens to me, I will turn around and, feeling sorry for those who are not at fault, I will not operate even for the one who gave me life."
And he concluded with a phrase that encapsulates his outrage: "Stupidity has its limits, please 'rearrange' the synapses in your heads."
The publication has received over 200 comments up to the closing of this note, many of which support the healthcare professional and lament the way the regime treats its doctors, who already face considerable challenges working under extremely poor conditions from every perspective.
The situation described reflects the reality of hospitals operating with less than 40% of the necessary staff, where healthcare professionals also face increasingly degrading working conditions.
In a system where doctors with decades of experience earn between 7,000 and 8,000 Cuban pesos, episodes like this highlight the profound institutional deterioration of Cuban public health.
Those who dare to publicly denounce these situations risk expulsions and sanctions that prevent them from practicing medicine for years.
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