The Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal published a video on X this Friday in which she stated that Cuba has a healthcare system so advanced that American patients have traveled to the island to access treatments they cannot obtain or afford in their country, and she called for lifting the embargo and implementing Medicare for All.
The statements directly contradict the data from the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (Minsap), which in February 2026 acknowledged that the system was on the brink of collapse, with 96,387 patients on the surgical waiting list, only 30% of medications available, and a sustained increase in infant and maternal mortality.
In the video, Jayapal stated that before the embargo, Cuba detected 70% of cancers at stage zero or one, a figure that she claims has now reversed to 70% at stage three, attributing this decline solely to U.S. sanctions.
He also mentioned a Cuban treatment for Alzheimer's that a doctor in Colorado applies to his patients with "remarkable results": "Imagine if nine million Americans had access to that treatment," he said.
The medication referred to is NeuralCIM, a nasal spray developed by the Cuban Center for Neurosciences, approved by Minsap in 2025 and available at the La Pradera International Clinic in Havana. The embargo prevents legal access in the United States.
Jayapal's statements come weeks after her visit to Cuba, from April first to sixth, along with Congressman Jonathan Jackson from Illinois, marking the first documented visit of U.S. legislators to the island in 2026.
During that trip, both congressmen met with Miguel Díaz-Canel and issued a statement blaming the energy sanctions from the Trump administration for cutting between 80% and 90% of Cuban oil imports, without publicly mentioning political prisoners or human rights violations.
The visit generated criticism from independent journalists. Journalist Mario J. Pentón wrote: "These Democratic congress members went to visit Díaz-Canel. Did they ask for the freedom of this boy imprisoned in Ciego de Ávila? No. The visit was to clean up the dictatorship's image and to talk about how bad Trump is."
The journalist José Raúl Gallego was equally critical: "Did he visit the prisons or the families of the political prisoners? Probably not, because he wasn't interested."
The reality of the Cuban healthcare system contradicts Jayapal's narrative with data coming from the island's own government: the infant mortality rate tripled between 2018 and 2025, increasing from 3.9 to 9.9 per thousand live births, while the maternal mortality rate rose from 38.7 to 44.1 per 100,000 live births in the same period.
Between 2021 and 2022, more than 12,000 doctors, 7,414 nurses, and 3,000 dentists emigrated from Cuba, earning salaries of about 16 dollars a month. Additionally, between 2010 and 2022, 63 hospitals, 37 clinics, and 187 maternal homes were closed.
The World Health Organization rated the health situation in Cuba as "deeply concerning" in February 2026, the same month when the minister José Ángel Portal Miranda admitted to the structural collapse of the system to the official press.
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