The Fe del Valle Ramos Maternity Hospital in Manzanillo, Granma, issued an official statement on Facebook acknowledging that it experienced a power outage due to the eighth complete failure of the National Electric System (SEN) of the year, which occurred on September 18.
According to the center itself, it was initially protected by an electrical microsystem activated to ensure the continuity of essential services. However, at 10:30 a.m., a failure occurred in that microsystem which coincided with a malfunction in the institution's generator, leaving the hospital without electrical backup for a period that the management deemed brief.
“At 10:30 a.m., a malfunction occurred in the microsystem, coinciding with a failure in the hospital's generator. This situation was resolved in a short period of time, restoring the necessary conditions for the normal operation of the hospital,” the statement indicates.
The institution assured that throughout the entire situation, "no medical complications related to pregnant women, postpartum women, and newborns were reported," and that the Labor and Delivery and Neonatology services maintained their care protocols at all times. The health personnel, the text added, "remained in constant support and monitoring."
The official statement responds to an anonymous post shared in the Facebook group "Sales in Manzanillo-Granma," in which a user reported that several cesarean sections were interrupted midway through the operation and that premature babies had to be transferred to the ultrasound area due to a lack of electricity.
"The doctors are not magicians; they do what they can, and if they are not given the right conditions, they cannot invent," wrote the author of the message. The post was labeled "FALSE" by the institution.
El Fe del Valle is the main gyneco-obstetric hospital in Manzanillo and one of the centers historically prioritized by the territorial microsystem of Granma in response to the declines of the SEN.
On this occasion, according to the dossier from the Cuban News Agency, the Granma microsystem was activated approximately one hour and 38 minutes after the disconnection, reaching about 21 MW to support hospitals, telecommunications, and water pumping.
The eighth total disconnection of the SEN in 2026 occurred on Thursday, September 18, between 13:52 and 13:57, caused by the successive tripping of two high-voltage 220 kV lines originating from Matanzas: the Matanzas-Cienfuegos line and the Matanzas-Santa Clara line. Reuters estimated that the blackout left nearly nine million people without electricity across the island.
The national interconnection was restored on Friday, September 19 at 8:21 PM, although not all consumers regained service immediately. The episode at Fe del Valle illustrates a pattern that repeats with each outage of the SEN: even prioritized hospitals are left exposed when backup systems fail in succession, and the official version and citizen testimonies offer accounts that are difficult to reconcile.
"I hope that one day you up there have to endure like this," concluded the anonymous user whose post was labeled as false.
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