A 35-second video published this Sunday on Facebook by independent journalist José L. Tan Estrada showcases the condition of the restrooms in the Surgery Room of the Provincial Hospital of Camagüey.
Dirty tiled floors, overflowing trash, dirty and flooded bathrooms—a scene that is becoming increasingly common in Cuban hospitals.
The center in question is the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Teaching Clinical Surgical Hospital, the largest in the province, with 514 beds and 21 operating rooms, and the main surgical care reference for the entire central region of Cuba.
What the images show is not an isolated or recent situation: the same hospital has faced public reports of deterioration since at least 2023, without any verifiable responses from health authorities.
In August 2025, neighbors and patients reported extremely dirty bathrooms, stagnant urine, and destroyed toilets in the vicinity of the surgery room of the same facility.
Months later, in November of that year, the collapse of ceilings in operating rooms forced the cancellation of scheduled surgeries.
At the beginning of 2026, new images revealed sewage under the beds of the hospitalized patients.
In April, standing water, garbage, rusty pipes, humidity, and soot were reported in the basement in front of the operating room with limited access.
In June, the Cuban Human Rights Observatory released photographs showing leaks, water accumulation, the presence of rodents, and damage in the Ambulatory Surgery Room of the same facility.
The collapse is not limited to Manuel Ascunce Domenech; the hospital crisis in Camagüey encompasses several centers in the province.
In August of this year, the Amalia Simoni Hospital was reported for neglecting patients who remained covered in feces, without hygiene or proper nutrition; one of them died shortly after his case became public.
That same month, rats were reported in the perinatology room of another hospital in Camagüey, and in May 2025, the Eduardo Agramonte Piña Pediatric Hospital was reported for cockroaches, stagnant urine, and unpleasant odors in its facilities.
The Cuban regime typically attributes these conditions to the U.S. embargo, an argument that Tan Estrada directly refutes in the title of his publication: a hospital with 21 operating rooms does not need external sanctions to explain the scattered cement in the bathrooms of its operating room or the accumulation of complaints that have gone unanswered for over three years.
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