Rosalba Castillo, mother of an eight-year-old boy from Pinar with severe epileptic encephalopathy, posted a message of denunciation on Facebook this Friday in which she rejects any recognition of the Cuban regime and states that everything they have achieved for her son has been forced through public pressure, not by the will of the State.
"The story of my son is not to elicit pity, it is to open people's eyes and see how they allow a child to DIE," Castillo wrote, accompanying the text with a photograph of the minor, Rosmiel Jesús Sánchez Castillo, lying in bed, with a tracheostomy and diaper, in a state of severe incapacitation.
The child, born on May 18, 2018, suffers from West syndrome, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, microcephaly, spastic quadriparesis, and global developmental delay.
He requires levetiracetam, clonazepam, sodium valproate, and topiramate, as well as cannulas, suction catheters, and a gastric feeding tube—supplies that, according to his mother, the Cuban healthcare system does not provide.
"My son does not know what a cannula is, an aspiration catheter, or a gastric feeding tube; my son does not know what it means to be treated like a human being in this country," Castillo stated.
The mother has been demanding answers for years. In February 2025, she warned that Rosmiel was suffering injuries to his feet because he no longer fit in his crib, and that the government of Pinar del Río had not resolved the family's housing situation for six years.
Following that public pressure, the authorities assigned a house, but Castillo is adamant: "The house was not given, it was demanded to avoid living in a hospital."
In her most recent post, the mother reports that the child's medication still hasn't entered the country and that a solar kit installed in their home is not working because the supplying Mipyme doesn't have batteries.
It also points out that the only real assistance has come from the solidarity project "Blessed to Bless," led by Daynelis Miranda, and not from the state.
Castillo also questions the fate of the donations and checks that the Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, has publicly displayed: "What happens to the donations, to the checks that José Ángel Portal Miranda presents?" he asks in his post.
The case of Rosmiel reflects a documented pattern in Cuba: families only receive a response from the State after it goes viral on social media. In 2024, the levetiracetam for the child appeared only after a public complaint.
The situation is set against the backdrop of an unprecedented pharmaceutical crisis. The Portal Miranda itself admitted before the National Assembly that only between 30% and 32% of the basic list of medications was available in the country.
By April 2026, 461 out of 651 essential medications were lacking, with antiepileptics among the most impacted.
In July 2026, the official Granma reported that Medicuba S.A. denounced the retention at the port of Cartagena of two containers of sodium valproate, an antiepileptic medication needed by thousands of Cuban patients, including children.
“We unfortunately live in a country that lacks resources, under the control of a government that only thinks of its own benefit, under a so-called medical power that is a lie,” wrote Castillo, closing his post with a direct slogan: “Murderers, down with communism, down with the PCC.”
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