A Cuban mother identified as Mari Albares made a desperate plea on Facebook asking for help for her 10-year-old daughter, who has been hospitalized for 23 days at the pediatric hospital of Las Tunas and has been in intensive care for five days, reported to be in critical condition.
The doctors diagnosed the girl with complicated hepatitis and liver failure, warning the family that the only treatment capable of saving her life is a liver transplant.
"Twenty-three days ago, I have been with my daughter at the pediatric hospital in Las Tunas. I am the mother of three children. The little girl has been in therapy for five days, reported as serious," Albares wrote in her post.
The mother also reported that the hospital does not have the necessary reagent to carry out the PT (prothrombin time) and INR tests, which are essential for assessing liver coagulation function.
"According to the doctors, they could not provide a diagnosis because they do not have a reagent. They are administering intramuscular vitamin K for the TP and INR; that analysis has not been performed," he explained.
Due to the inability to confirm the diagnosis accurately, the medical staff administers vitamin K intramuscularly as a provisional measure, without the laboratory data that would guide the definitive treatment.
"We are desperate. Please help us. She is a ten-year-old girl with a strong will to live. Please share so this reaches someone who can help me," Albares pleaded.
The case adds to a pattern that is increasingly recurring in Cuba: families of children with severe liver diseases who cannot access transplants within the country and turn to social media to seek international assistance.
Just days before, the parents of baby Raibel David Gómez Santana, 10 months old and from Sancti Spíritus, made a similar appeal due to severe liver failure, resulting in a wave of solidarity on social media.
Last Wednesday, solidarity for baby Raibel David continued to grow, and last Tuesday it was reported that the activist who helped manage Amanda Lemus's case also joined that effort.
The most well-known case is that of Amanda Lemus Ortiz, a Cuban girl with biliary atresia who was successfully transplanted at the La Paz University Hospital in Madrid in March 2024, following months of negotiations, a humanitarian visa, and massive supportive assistance.
The path that these families must take is long and critical: obtaining a letter of acceptance from a foreign hospital, processing the humanitarian visa, and raising funds for the trip and treatment, all while time is running out for a patient in acute liver failure.
Cuban studies on this condition in children indicate a mortality rate of 36.8% in pediatric acute liver failure, with worse outcomes when the prothrombin time exceeds 20 seconds, precisely the data that the hospital in Las Tunas cannot measure due to a lack of reagents.
The William Soler University Pediatric Hospital in Havana is the national reference center for pediatric liver transplants in Cuba, although multiple families have reported since 2023 that the procedure is not effectively available in practice.
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