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A Cuban doctor with multiple specialties and teaching credentials published an emotional and heartbreaking testimony on Facebook where she explains why she has been out of practice for almost six months and why she does not plan to return to it for a long time.
Liliana Isabel Salazar Villariño, a specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine with a Diploma in Intensive Medicine and Emergencies and the academic rank of Instructor Professor, described with specific figures the reason for her decision.
"Even with more than five shifts a month, my salary never reached ten thousand pesos. The number doesn’t sound bad, but when you go out to buy food, especially for your child, you hit a wall, and it hurts," he recounted.
As a single mother, upon moving to a new city, she was required to find a job immediately in the non-medical sector.
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Salazar Villariño detailed the prices that make it impossible to make ends meet: a carton of eggs costs 3,000 pesos, powdered milk 2,700, a liter of oil 1,300, and a kilogram of rice 650.
"ZAZ, the salary is gone. Goodbye sugar, zero vegetables, zero fruits, zero staples, I can't take transportation, I can't buy personal hygiene products, I can't buy cleaning supplies, I can't, I can't, I can't," she wrote.
The doctor described how she had to survive the month with the little she had purchased and donations from friends and patients, "with a lump in her throat," while working shifts, attending to pregnant women, teaching her students, and getting little sleep.
The paradox you point out is revealing: in the private sector, cleaning a house or working a shift as a clerk can generate more than 2,000 pesos in less than eight hours, plus tips. "The private sector guarantees that you can feed yourself, not your university degree," he wrote.
Your case is not an isolated one. The average salary in the health sector in Cuba was around 6,562 pesos as of November 2025, equivalent to about 16 dollars at the unofficial exchange rate, while the cost of a basic basket for two people in Havana exceeded 41,000 pesos per month.
In July 2025, the Minister of Health himself admitted to the collapse of the Cuban healthcare system, and in February 2026, the regime acknowledged that it only covers 30% of the basic medication list.
Between 2021 and 2024, Cuba lost approximately 77,522 healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, technicians, and dentists. The number of doctors decreased from about 105,000 to 75,364, worsening the ratio of residents per doctor from 104 to 131.
It is not the first time a health professional has made this decision. A doctor with two specialties resigned from Calixto García Hospital in 2023 due to a lack of supplies and insufficient salary, earning only 49 dollars a month. More recently, another doctor described the reality while walking through a Cuban hospital, comparing it to the capitalism that the regime so heavily criticizes.
Salazar Villariño concluded his publication with a message for his patients: "That gives me satisfaction for who I was and who I am, even though I don't wear the white coat."
Her testimony encapsulates the exhaustion of thousands of Cuban doctors who, as she herself wrote, "have resigned not because they are not passionate about their profession, but because there is an emotional strain that shakes you."
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