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The Arnaldo Milián Castro Provincial Clinical Surgical University Hospital in Santa Clara, the main healthcare center in Villa Clara, was without water supply for over 72 hours due to the breakdown of the turbines in its pumping system, according to a report sent to the editorial office of CiberCuba, which details critical sanitary conditions for both 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 problem.
According to the testimony, surgeons were required to wash their hands with just 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, the prices of bottled water skyrocketed by 100 pesos taking advantage of the situation, and even so, it ran out. Doctors don't even have a way to wash their hands," describes the complaint.
Patients collected rainwater for bathing and to flush the toilets, which progressively deteriorated as they could not be cleaned. 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 to 12.5% of a Cuban minimum wage— and even so, the product sold out.
The whistleblower, with direct access to an angiology doctor working at the hospital, pointed out that the situation was not new: "If patients were already getting infected with Pseudomonas due to poor hygiene and epidemiological conditions, now there's this. It's another level of collapse because, in my opinion, the public health system has been collapsing for some time now, which they refuse to admit."
The complaint also highlights the chronic absence of surgical gloves in the facility. The whistleblower recalls a previous incident at the same hospital where a specialist had to drain a festering wound without gloves: "She asked for gloves and was told there were none. In the end, she carried out the procedure without gloves."
On June 19, the Cuban News Agency —a state media outlet of the regime— published a note announcing that the malfunction 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 only one pump, which allowed 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 healthcare system is on the brink of collapse, as acknowledged by the Minister of Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, in February of this year before the AP agency. In April, the UN warned about , including those of more than 11,000 children, and pointed out that over 80% of the water pumping equipment in the country relies on electricity, making the water vulnerability of hospitals a structural issue.
During that same period, 461 out of 651 essential drugs were unavailable in Cuban state pharmacies, and infant mortality 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 complainant accurately anticipated what would happen: "The truth is that they will probably seek a solution if the problem goes viral; they are quite predictable." Two days after the complaint was received, the regime announced the repairs with the presence of the provincial deputy governor and the highest authorities of Villa Clara.
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