The Cuban doctor known on social media as María Magdalena Lasacerdotisa posted a warning video on Facebook this Monday, in which she claims that she is being accused before her polyclinic and the police, and warns that "the most severe repression is about to begin" against her.
The doctor, a specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine, explains that she placed her daughter—who suffers from chondromalacia in her leg and cannot climb stairs—in the nursing area of her office, a space that was unused because no activities take place there. According to the doctor, the authorities are "taking advantage" of that situation to accuse her.
"They are accusing me at the clinic and at the police station, and they are coming here," he stated in the video, which garnered over 35,000 views in just a few hours.
Far from backing down, the doctor announced that she will go further with her accusations: "I will name and identify everything that is happening in my polyclinic, from the management and the Human Resources Department to the municipality. This is just the beginning. The rest will come later."
This new episode is a continuation of a case that went viral last Thursday, when the same doctor published a video lasting almost six minutes in which she announced that she refused to continue providing the "charge sheets" because she has to buy them out of her own pocket along with the pens, while the State does not supply her with those materials.
The Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP) documented an alert on June 9 titled "Cuban Doctor Victim of Workplace Harassment for Refusing to Sign Regime Campaign," in which it points out that the doctor was also harassed for refusing to sign the government initiative "My Signature for the Homeland," adding a dimension of political reprisal to her case.
The case is set against the backdrop of a deep crisis in the Cuban healthcare system. Cuban doctors survive on between 10 and 16 dollars a month, while the basic basket for two people in Havana exceeds 41,000 pesos per month.
Dozens of doctors confirmed in the comments on their videos that they have been purchasing their own papers and pens for years. Several also pointed out that those charge sheets are used to "inflate" health statistics that do not reflect reality, and that professionals are pressured to fabricate data.
The case of this doctor is not isolated. The oncologist Álvaro Pérez Pérez, the only specialist on the Isle of Youth, was fined 4,000 pesos on June 6 for selling notebooks and used clothing in front of his house to supplement his income. Doctor Liliana Isabel Salazar Villariño left the medical profession in May because her salary never reached 10,000 pesos despite doing more than five shifts a month.
This Monday, furthermore, anger erupted among regulated doctors in Cuba, as health professionals collectively denounced the restrictions imposed by the regime that prevent them from leaving the country.
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