A man was found unconscious at the entrance of a house in Santa Marta, a locality in the municipality of Cárdenas, in the province of Matanzas, and those who assisted him had to confront a series of shortages while trying to obtain emergency medical care for him.
According to the report by journalist Christian Arbolaez on Facebook, neighbors who found the man decided to take him immediately to the Ramón Martínez Ramírez polyclinic in Santa Marta.
What they found upon arrival worsened the situation: the health center did not have the facilities to conduct a glucose test.
"The doctors and nurses did not have the necessary means to perform a glucose test," Arbolaez recounted based on the testimony of those accompanying the patient.
In the face of urgency, the attendants made a decision that encapsulates the state of the Cuban healthcare system: to return to the patient's home to retrieve his personal blood sugar monitoring equipment in order to care for him.
Meanwhile, an ambulance from SIUM (Integrated Medical Emergency System) was requested, but the vehicle took about an hour to arrive.
"Those who experienced the moment assure that the concern was great and lament that, in the midst of an emergency, they had to seek out the necessary resources to attend to the patient on their own," wrote Arbolaez.
The episode is not an isolated incident. The reference hospital in Cárdenas, Julio M. Aristegui Villamil, has been accumulating complaints of collapse since early 2026: doctors have reported anonymously that patients must bring their own syringes, catheters, and venipuncture equipment, and that it is not possible to conduct CT scans, MRIs, or various blood tests.
In May, another doctor warned that they intended to transfer the only functional anesthetic machine from the center to another hospital, which would have left the main facility in the municipality without surgical capabilities.
The lack of glucometers in Cuban healthcare facilities has been documented for years.
In 2023, the official newspaper Granma acknowledged that glucose testing strips had been absent from pharmacies "in recent years," with an estimated demand of 90 million units and a projected local production capacity of only 30 million.
Although the cause for the Santa Marta neighbor's unconsciousness is unknown, dozens of cases of fainting due to hunger have been documented in Cuba.
In 2024, an elderly man suffered a hypoglycemic episode while waiting in line at a bank in Santiago de Cuba, standing in the sun, poorly nourished and ill, with no available seat despite his advanced age.
Months later, a man collapsed in front of a house in the Las Cruces neighborhood of Altamira, Santiago de Cuba, apparently due to a hypoglycemic crisis caused by hunger and lack of food intake.
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