The Arnaldo Milián Castro University Provincial Clinical Surgical Hospital in Santa Clara, the main healthcare center of Villa Clara, went without water supply for over 72 hours due to the breakdown of the turbines in its pumping system, according to a complaint sent to the editorial team of CiberCuba that describes critical sanitary conditions for patients and medical staff.
The breakdown left the center completely without water for several moments, although the official version from the regime tried to downplay the extent of the issue.
According to the testimony, surgeons had to wash their hands with barely a bucket of water, while clinical doctors had no access to water at all for this purpose. "Surgeons have to wash their hands with a small bucket of water, patients carry rainwater to bathe, bottled water prices shot up by 100 pesos taking advantage of the situation, and even then, it ran out. Doctors do not even have a way to wash their hands," the complaint describes.
Patients collected rainwater for bathing and for flushing toilets, which progressively deteriorated due to the inability to clean them. The hospital's small and medium-sized enterprise took advantage of the crisis to raise the price of bottled water from 220 to 350 pesos—equivalent to half a dollar and 12.5% of a minimum Cuban salary—and even so, the product sold out.
The whistleblower, who had direct access to an angiologist working at the hospital, pointed out that the situation was not new: "If patients were already getting infected with pseudomonas due to poor hygienic and epidemiological conditions, now this. A further level of collapse, because in my opinion, the public health system has been on the verge of collapse for a while, which they do not want to admit."
The complaint also highlights the chronic shortage of surgical gloves at the facility. The whistleblower recalls a previous incident at the same hospital where a specialist had to drain a pus-filled wound without gloves: "She asked for gloves and was told there were none. In the end, she proceeded without gloves."
On June 19, the Cuban News Agency —a state-run media outlet— published a note announcing that the issue had been resolved. The general director of Health in Villa Clara, Dr. Leydi Saray Rodríguez, stated that “there is now stability in the water supply.” The director of the hospital, Dr. Esteban Ring, told the official media that “the intensive care units and operating rooms continued to function” and that pumping was carried out in a limited manner with just one pump, which allowed the water to reach only the first and second floors.
That version contrasts with the testimony received, which describes a total collapse of the supply throughout the building, not just on the upper floors.
The episode is not isolated. The Cuban health system is on the verge of collapse, as acknowledged in February of this year by the Minister of Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, to the AP agency. In April, the UN warned about , including those of over 11,000 children, and pointed out that more than 80% of the water pumping equipment in the country relies on electricity, making the water vulnerability of hospitals a structural problem.
During that same period, 461 out of 651 essential medicines were out of stock in Cuban state pharmacies, and the infant mortality rate reached 9.9 per thousand live births in 2025.
The Arnaldo Milián Castro hospital itself made headlines in April of this year when it published the international costs of hemodialysis in response to complaints from patients regarding outbreaks of hepatitis and misappropriation of resources.
The whistleblower accurately predicted what would happen: "The truth is that they will probably look for a solution if the problem goes viral; they are quite predictable." Two days after the complaint was received, the regime announced the repair in the presence of the provincial vice governor and the highest authorities of Villa Clara.
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