Surgeon arrested after reporting humiliation at his hospital by an official

The Cuban surgeon Yonardo Fonseca Mesa published a message on Facebook this Friday titled I Am Being Taken into Custody, a brief but alarming statement that quickly spread on social media, causing concern among his followers and colleagues.

The doctor, who had previously raised his voice about the conditions of the Cuban healthcare system, did not provide further details in his post regarding the reasons for his detention or which authorities were transferring him. The brief statement was enough to raise alarms among those closely monitoring the situation of healthcare professionals in Cuba.

This week, the doctor reported on his Facebook page an incident of humiliation he experienced at his hospital due to a staff member, while he was trying to take the elevator to operate on two cancer patients.

The episode began before reaching the operating room. Fonseca Mesa described having spent a rough night without power outages, a morning without breakfast because he has no gas, no electricity, or solar panels, and having to struggle "creatively" to get to his workplace.

Once inside the hospital, as he entered the elevator heading to the fifth floor, an official whom he claims to have never seen in his life ordered him to get off and take the stairs instead.

"It turns out that a 'chief of trivial matters' (whom I had never seen in my life) had the audacity to tell me that I had to get off and go up the stairs because, according to him, it was 'orders from the hospital director,' and that that abominable device was 'only for patients,'" he recounted.

The surgeon himself described the scene vividly in his post:

"Today, after a rough night of blackouts and a morning without breakfast (because I have no gas, electricity, or solar panels), after struggling in a 'creative' way with how to get to the place where they say I still work; I get into the elevator to try to reach the 5th floor and the room, where two cancer patients were waiting for their surgeries."

According to the account of the incident, the order was not only perceived as 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 follow the directive.

"Although the situation got a bit tense, of course I didn't back down; I arrived in my classroom and did my best for those two people who were not at fault for anything," he described.

The complaint, however, was not limited to the specific incident.

The doctor took advantage of his publication to criticize the salary conditions and the treatment that professionals in the sector receive.

Fonseca Mesa is not the only Cuban doctor who has faced consequences for expressing his opinion. In the past, another Cuban doctor reported an incident at his hospital involving what he described as a chief of trivial matters I had never seen in my life, highlighting the tense atmosphere that many health workers on the island experience.

The situation of Cuban doctors is critical on multiple fronts. According to recent data, per month, an amount that barely suffices to meet basic needs in the context of the economic crisis the country is facing.

The detentions of healthcare professionals who criticize the system are not a new phenomenon. An emblematic case was that of the doctor Yoendry Figueredo Izaguirre, who, after publicly denouncing the shortage of resources and the failures of the healthcare system, saw how Figueredo Izaguirre was expelled from his job in Bayamo, in a repressive pattern that repeats itself with those who dare to speak out.

This type of detention occurs in a context of increasing repression. According to the organization Prisoners Defenders, Cuba had over 1,214 political prisoners in February 2026, a figure that reflects the extent of the repression imposed by the regime against any form of dissent or public criticism.