Alessandro Di Battista, former deputy of the Five Star Movement (M5S) from Italy, has been hospitalized in serious condition in Cuba since Friday night.
The 48-year-old politician and journalist was on the island to produce a series of reports when he experienced a sudden feeling of illness, according to ANSA agency.
Di Battista traveled to Cuba as a reporter to create a documentary series titled "La polvere del mondo" intended for the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and the platform TvLoft. He was admitted urgently after complaining of a severe headache and sudden general malaise. So far, no official medical diagnosis has been disclosed.
The first reports indicated that he received initial care at a hospital in Santa Clara, about 300 kilometers from Havana. It was later confirmed that he would be transported by ambulance to the capital, where the Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras —the main referral center in Havana for complex cases and foreign patients— was prepared to receive him.
The Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani reacted with concern and assured that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately mobilized the embassy in Havana. “I pray for his health. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will provide him and his family with all the necessary assistance. I stand with his loved ones and the political community he represents,” he stated.
Peter Gomez, editor of Il Fatto Quotidiano, was one of the first to spread the news through the social network X. "Alessandro Di Battista ill in Cuba: he is hospitalized in serious condition," he wrote, confirming that the journalist was working on a report for the newspaper when the incident occurred. Gomez added that he knew few details beyond what had been published, but that the situation was "serious."
The M5S, the party of which Di Battista was a prominent figure before leaving in February 2021, expressed "great concern" and stated that it hoped to receive "positive information," while extending its condolences to the family "during this time of deep concern."
Di Battista was a deputy for Lazio in the general elections of 2013 and did not run for re-election in 2018. He definitively left the M5S after rejecting the party's support for the government of Mario Draghi.
Since then, he has reinvented himself as a geopolitical journalist, producing reports from the United States, Mexico, Iran, Bolivia, and Russia, among other countries. Since 2023, he has served as vice president of the association "Schierarsi," and according to Italian media, he was considering transforming it into a political party to run for elections again.
The hospitalization of Di Battista occurs at a time of acute crisis in the Cuban healthcare system. More than 70% of essential medications—461 out of 651—were reported to be in short supply in April 2026, and over 96,000 patients were waiting on the surgical list, according to data from the regime itself. The Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, had warned in February of that year that the system was "on the verge of collapse", a statement that contrasts sharply with the care that the Italian journalist will now receive on the island.
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