A Cuban resident in Italy recorded a video in which she shows the dinner served to her daughter in an Italian public hospital, and she dedicated it explicitly to "shaming Díaz-Canel and all his people."
The video posted on Facebook by the user identified as Valeri Havana garnered over 73,900 views in just a few hours.
In it, the woman captures with the camera a tray that includes pasta with tomato sauce, a generous portion of chicken with mashed potatoes, a vegetable salad, individual packets of oil, salt, vinegar, and cheese, wrapped bread, fruit, and water, all covered and presented hygienically.
"This is nothing out of the ordinary," she clarifies, emphasizing that it is an ordinary center, "a simple little clinic." Even so, the contrast with the Cuban hospital reality is the focus of her message.
What stands out the most to the Cuban is that all this attention was free: "For all this, we paid nothing, zero euros."
Compare the situation to that of the United States, where a similar income would amount to a million-dollar bill.
"In Italy, you pay zero euros and look at the great service. The doctors and nurses, very nice service, everything perfect. Díaz-Canel, this is living normally as human beings and not like animals. And look, the room is perfectly clean, the bathrooms super clean, water, disinfectants..."
In addition to the food, the woman inspects the room and the bathrooms: "The room is perfectly clean, the bathrooms are super clean, water, disinfectant, gloves. What more can I say? Everything is available as in a pharmacy."
The video arrives at a time when the Cuban healthcare system is undergoing its worst crisis in decades.
In February, the Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, admitted that the system was "on the verge of collapse", and in August Díaz-Canel recognized the magnitude of the health disaster.
The data is alarming: more than 70% of essential medications are out of stock in state pharmacies, over 96,000 surgeries remain pending -including more than 11,000 in children- and hospitals are experiencing power outages of up to 20 hours a day.
Food insecurity in Cuban hospitals has a documented pattern.
In August 2024, relatives of patients at the "La Colonia" Children’s Hospital in Santiago de Cuba reported a dinner consisting of rice, two fried items, a piece of root vegetable, a slice of melon, and bread.
Two months later, the Northern Children's Hospital in the same city served hospitalized children white rice, watery peas, and a piece of sweet potato.
In April of that year, pregnant women admitted to the Materno Sur Hospital in Santiago described their meals as "pig food": hard fried eggs, watery peas, and plantain fufú. One of them stated that "as soon as the food is brought to her, she throws it out without even tasting it."
The irony highlighted in Valeri Havana's video is particularly sharp: Italy is precisely one of the countries to which the Cuban regime exports doctors to support regional health systems, while hospitals on the Island operate under conditions that multiple testimonies liken to conflict zones.
In July, Italy had about 200 Cuban doctors working in its territory, mainly in Calabria.
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