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Rocío Bustamante Riverón, an 11-year-old Cuban girl who suffered from an orbital lymphangioma in her left eye since she was eleven months old, is now completely healthy after receiving treatment in Madrid.
Her mother, Adela Riverón Vega, confirmed on Facebook that the latest MRI yielded satisfactory results.
"Today, I want to sincerely thank all the people who supported me in coming to Spain and giving my daughter the opportunity to receive the treatment she needed to save her little eye," Adela wrote.
"In Cuba, I had been told that there was no solution, but God brought wonderful people into my life and Spain welcomed us in a very special way," she added.
Mother and daughter arrived in Madrid on November 16, thanks to the efforts of exiled Cuban doctor Lucio Enríquez Nodarse, who managed to engage the Spanish healthcare system to care for the minor. The treatment was carried out at the Fundación Jiménez Díaz in Madrid, where Rocío was hospitalized with an intravenous line and received specialized care.
The happy ending contrasts with years of neglect by the Cuban healthcare system. Since she was four years old, doctors in Cuba indicated that they would only intervene if the tumor burst, without providing any active treatment.
In 2018, doctors at Ramón Pando Ferrer Hospital signed a report acknowledging that the treatment was "incomplete, risky, and difficult" in Cuba, and that the technical conditions to operate on the girl were not available.
In July 2025, the situation was critical: Rocío had been in a continuous crisis for three months, experiencing recurrent bleeding and severe headaches, and it had been three years since her last follow-up MRI. The only treatment recommended by Cuban doctors was moisturizing drops, cold compresses, and rest.
The girl passed through the William Soler, the Juan Manuel Márquez, the Ramón Pando Ferrer, and the Oncology Institute without receiving any treatment. The MINSAP also did not provide for her care abroad, despite having a department dedicated to it.
It was then that Adela contacted Dr. Enríquez Nodarse, known for his activism in defense of Cuban patients, including the case of the child Damir Ortiz, who passed away in April 2025 in Miami due to sepsis contracted in Cuban hospitals.
"In the best-case scenario, Rocío was doomed to lose an eye. In the worst-case scenario, to lose her life," the doctor wrote while announcing the girl's recovery on Facebook. He was emphatic in pointing to the regime as responsible: "The dictatorship gives nothing for 'free'. The dictatorship takes away. The dictatorship tears lives apart."
Rocío's case adds to a long list of severely ill Cuban children who have only been able to receive proper care outside the island, in contrast to the official rhetoric of the regime about the supposed excellence of its healthcare system.
Doctor Enríquez Nodarse concluded his publication with a reflection: "I hope that one day our country will have a robust, modern, and truly humane healthcare system, where no child - nor any person - ever dies from abandonment, negligence, or missed opportunities."
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