An investigation by the independent Cuban organization Casa Palanca into corruption and the covert privatization of the healthcare system on the island has been selected as one of the 12 finalists for the Roche Health Journalism Award 2026, announced this week by Roche Latin America and the Gabo Foundation.
The work, titled “The Silent Privatization: Corruption Practices in the Cuban National Health System”, is competing in the Written Journalism category and was authored by journalists Luzbely (Luz) Escobar, Mel Herrera, Laura Vargas, and Náyare Menoyo.
The 12 finalists were chosen from a preliminary selection of 73 entries, which were filtered from a total of 699 pieces received from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. This is the fourteenth edition of the competition and the first in which all four categories—written, audiovisual, digital, and sound—were announced simultaneously.
According to the official description on the award's page, the research begins with a devastating premise: "While the Cuban state promotes its National Health System as a bastion of free and excellent care, the reality faced by citizens in hospitals and pharmacies is that of a collapsing system [...] the constitutional right to health has, in practice, transformed into a market of privileges where life has an informal price."
The work is based on a survey conducted with over 2,100 people across Cuba in early 2025, in collaboration with Cubadata. The results are striking: as revealed in the report —also covered by the independent media elToque—, 74.3% of Cubans who sought medical attention in 2024 had to pay for services or medications that are officially free.
Other figures from the study are equally revealing: 78% of respondents turned to personal contacts for assistance, 52.2% gave up seeking help due to the inability to cover informal costs, and 82.4% believed that corruption in healthcare is "widespread" or "common" in the country.
The research itself concludes that "corruption in access to healthcare is no longer an exception, but rather a structural practice within the system. What once may have seemed like an isolated deviation now operates as an unwritten rule that conditions medical care on the Island."
This deterioration is supported by official figures. The Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, acknowledged in July 2025 before the National Assembly that only 30% of the essential medication supply was available, and in July 2026 he reported that more than 100,000 people were waiting for surgery, including 12,000 children. Cuba went from 106,131 doctors in 2021 to 75,364 in 2024: a decrease of 30,767, representing a 29% decline in three years. And the conditions in recent months have only worsened.
Seven of the 12 finalist works in this edition were created by teams made up exclusively of women, and 62% of the total entries were submitted by female authors. Casa Palanca's research is part of this trend: its four authors are women.
The winners of the 14th Roche Health Journalism Award will be announced on October 7 at a ceremony during Roche Press Day 2026 in San José, Costa Rica.
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