A man passed away last Saturday at the intersection of F and 11 streets, in the El Vedado neighborhood of Havana, following a prolonged delay in the arrival of the ambulance, according to a video shared on Facebook by independent journalist Avana de la Torre.
According to eyewitnesses, the man fell to the ground in the middle of the street, and those nearby began calling emergency services. The ambulance took "a very long time" to arrive, and by the time it finally got there, the man had already passed away.
The paramedics covered him with a sheet and left without picking up the body.
The corpse lay on the sidewalk for hours, surrounded by passersby, until the ambulance returned for a second time to take it away.
A witness who recorded the scene made it clear: "It's been exactly two hours and forty minutes since the gentleman passed away, and he is still there. He is still lying there. The ambulance hasn't even sent anyone down. Everything is just the same."
Cuban authorities did not issue any statement regarding the incident nor disclosed the identity of the deceased.
Avana de la Torre summed it up bluntly: "This is communist Cuba: people are completely unprotected, ambulances don’t arrive on time, medications are unavailable, hospitals are in ruins, and the dictatorship continues to thrive on triumphalism, forced marches, lies, and its grand empty speeches."
The activist added, "While they talk about 'medical power,' a Cuban dies in the street waiting for an ambulance that didn't arrive in time."
The case is not an isolated incident. In April 2026, Alexis Rosales Aldama died in Santiago de Cuba after waiting more than four hours for an ambulance, and his wife reported that the Integrated Medical Emergency System responded that "an ambulance does not save lives." In January 2026, former police officer Yordanis Beltrán Beltrán, 42 years old, died in the same city after a delay of more than two hours.
The crisis of the medical emergency system in Cuba is documented and acknowledged by the regime itself. The Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, admitted in February 2026 to the Associated Press that the Cuban health system is "on the brink of collapse", with ambulances out of fuel and blackouts lasting up to twenty hours a day.
The ministry itself acknowledged that the ambulance system covered only 39.6% of the emergency demand in 2023.
In response to that collapse, the regime introduced just 25 electric ambulances in February 2026 for a population of over 11 million residents, a figure that experts deemed an insufficient patch.
This is compounded by the fact that only 30% of the essential medicines are available in pharmacies and hospitals, and there are over 96,000 postponed surgeries nationwide.
The contrast with the official narrative is stark. While the regime has historically proclaimed itself a "medical powerhouse" and exports doctors to dozens of countries, a citizen lay dead on a sidewalk in Havana for nearly three hours without anyone picking him up.
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