A 35-second video published this Sunday on Facebook by independent journalist José L. Tan Estrada shows the condition of the restrooms in the Surgery Room of the Provincial Hospital of Camagüey.
Dirty tiled floors, overflowing trash, filthy and flooded bathrooms—a scene that is becoming increasingly common in Cuban hospitals.
The center in question is the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Clinical Surgical Teaching Hospital, the largest in the province, with 514 beds and 21 operating rooms, and the primary reference for surgical care for the entire central region of Cuba.
What the images depict is neither an isolated nor recent situation: the same hospital has numerous public complaints about deterioration.
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 suspension of scheduled surgeries.
At the beginning of 2026, new images revealed sewage under the beds of hospitalized patients.
In April, stagnant water, trash, rusty pipes, dampness, and soot were reported in the basement in front of the operating room with limited access.
In June, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights released photographs showing leaks, standing water, the presence of rodents, and damage in the Outpatient Surgery Room of the same facility.
The collapse is not limited to Manuel Ascunce Domenech Hospital: the hospital crisis in Camagüey encompasses several centers in the province.
In August of this year, the Amalia Simoni Hospital was criticized for neglecting patients who remained covered in excrement, lacking hygiene and proper nutrition; one of them died shortly after their case became public.
That same month, rats were reported in the perinatology ward of another hospital in Camagüey, and in May 2025, the Eduardo Agramonte Piña Pediatric Hospital was criticized for the presence of cockroaches, stagnant urine, and unpleasant odors in its facilities.
The Cuban regime usually attributes these conditions to the U.S. embargo, a claim 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 surgery room or the accumulation of complaints that have gone unanswered for over three years.
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