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A citizen from Holguín reported on Facebook that an elderly person nearly lost their life because the Hospital Clínico Quirúrgico de Holguín did not have paper to conduct an electrocardiogram, a material that, according to the account, is systematically stolen from the hospitals in the city and resold on the black market for 3,500 Cuban pesos (CUP) per meter.
Ernesto Almaguer Díaz reported on his Facebook profile that a neighbor called him around 11 PM to urgently take his father to the hospital due to a suspected heart attack.
The doctors ruled out the diagnosis based on clinical assessment, but they could not confirm it with an electrocardiogram because there was no paper available for the equipment.
"The little amount of paper that comes in is stolen, plain and simple, STOLEN, from this hospital and from Lenin, maybe even from the Military hospital as well, and then sold for 3,500 CUP per meter on Calle 13 in San Field," wrote Almaguer Díaz, comparing that area of Holguín to La Cuevita in Havana, a well-known black market spot in the capital.
The patient had to return the following day to Hospital Lenin, where the heart attack that the family had suspected from the beginning was finally confirmed.
"Literally, if you don't have the 3,500 CUP, you die," declared the author of the complaint.
Almaguer Díaz directly targeted the party and health authorities in Holguín, accusing them of being "focused on slogans and calls for creative resistance, rather than ensuring that these supplies are allocated to those in need."
He also criticized the regime's priorities: "Things like this happen when only slogans are created and more patrols are planned than ambulances and Torres K hotels with million-dollar budgets."
The case is not isolated. The theft and trafficking of medical supplies from state hospitals is a documented phenomenon in multiple provinces.
In 2025, there were arrests of healthcare personnel in Granma for stealing medications and supplies to sell them in informal markets, and in Pinar del Río, a nurse and an accomplice were arrested for trafficking syringes, vials, and injectable bulbs.
Similarly, in February 2025, the Police dismantled an illegal warehouse in Manzanillo containing antibiotics, surgical supplies, and controlled medications.
The Lenin Hospital in Holguín had already been involved in previous complaints: in October 2025, the power outages left its patients without hemodialysis, who had to be referred to the Clinical Surgical Hospital.
The health crisis illustrated by this case has official recognition.
In February 2026, the Minister of Health José Ángel Portal Miranda admitted to the AP agency that the Cuban healthcare system was "on the brink of collapse". By April 2026, 461 out of 651 essential medications were out of stock in state pharmacies, and there were 96,400 patients awaiting surgery.
Almaguer Díaz rejected the official narrative that attributes the problems to the U.S. embargo: "It is no longer just the supposed 'blockade' that the authorities claim is the cause of our hardships; it is the indifference, institutional neglect, and corruption—those are the more visible evils that are cannibalizing the Cuban people."
The whistleblower concluded his post with a direct warning to the regime: "Keep growing fat and forgetting the people; soon enough, those who support you will either rebel or perish, and you, as Newton's Law dictates, will fall under your own weight."
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