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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 admitted to the pediatric hospital in Las Tunas for 23 days and 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.
“It's been 23 days that I have been with my daughter at the pediatric hospital in Las Tunas. I am the mother of three children. The 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 conduct the PT (prothrombin time) and INR tests, which are essential for assessing liver coagulation function.
"According to the doctors, they couldn't provide a diagnosis because they don't have a reagent. They are administering intramuscular vitamin K for the TP and INR; that analysis has not been done," he explained.
Due to the inability to confirm the diagnosis accurately, the medical staff administers intramuscular vitamin K 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 this so it reaches someone who can help me," pleaded Albares.
The case adds to a pattern that is increasingly common in Cuba: families of children with severe liver diseases who cannot access transplants within the country and turn to social media to seek international help.
Just days earlier, the parents of baby Raibel David Gómez Santana, 10 months old and from Sancti Spíritus, made a similar appeal due to severe liver failure, generating a wave of solidarity on social media.
Last Wednesday, the 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 this process.
The most well-known case is that of Amanda Lemus Ortiz, a Cuban girl with biliary atresia who was successfully transplanted at La Paz University Hospital in Madrid in March 2024, after months of efforts, a humanitarian visa, and massive solidarity support.
The path 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 with 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 information 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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