A Cuban mother identified as Suramy Cuba reported in a Facebook video a plague of cockroaches at the Juan Manuel Márquez Teaching Pediatric Hospital in Marianao, Havana, while her daughter was hospitalized at the facility.
"It is terrible to enter a hospital; we had to put cotton in our ears because the cockroaches walk all over you, what a mess in a place where there are such small children," the woman stated in the recording, which accumulated over 72,000 views and nearly 1,741 reactions on the social network.
In the images, the mother shows cockroaches moving across the floor, the beds, and the walls of the room where her daughter is admitted. She recounts that she tried to rest for a few minutes and woke up with a cockroach crawling on her arm.
The complaint is not the first against that same hospital. In September 2023, a similar infestation was already documented, with images showing cockroaches on mattresses and railings of pediatric beds.
In March of this year, President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited the center, an occasion that reminded the media that the hospital "has not been free of scandals", specifically referencing that complaint from 2023.
The pattern is repeated in other centers across the country. The Ángel Arturo Aballí Pediatric Hospital in Havana was reported in February 2025 for an invasion of cockroaches and bedbugs. In May 2025, the Eduardo Agramonte Piña Pediatric Hospital in Camagüey was pointed out for cockroaches, stagnant urine, and foul odors. In August 2025, the Lenin Hospital in Holguín accumulated similar complaints for bedbugs and cockroaches in mattresses and bathrooms without water.
In June of this year, the Maternal Hospital of Matanzas was reported for an infestation of bedbugs and cockroaches in beds and bathrooms without water.
Insanitary conditions are occurring within the framework of an unprecedented healthcare collapse in Cuba: only 30% of the national essential medicine supply is available, with 461 out of 651 drugs out of stock. Infant mortality has reached 9.9 per 1,000 live births, more than double what it was in 2018, when it was 4.0. Over 11,000 children are waiting for surgery across the country.
Hospitals also operate with blackouts of up to twenty hours a day, which jeopardize the preservation of medications and the functioning of pediatric intensive care units.
This Tuesday, the humanitarian organization Open Arms arrived in Havana to deliver photovoltaic equipment to the pediatric ICU of the Juan Manuel Márquez Hospital itself, an initiative that highlights the extent of the deterioration faced by Cuban children admitted to that facility.
Filed under: