Almost a year after leaving the island and on the verge of losing an eye, the Cuban girl Rocío Bustamante Riverón enjoys full health, with no aftereffects in Spain.
The exiled Cuban doctor Lucio Enríquez Nodarse confirmed it on Tuesday through his social media with a photo collage showing the before and after of the little girl, whose case touched the hearts of thousands in 2025.
"Less than a year ago, Rocío was in Cuba. The 'IM-medical power' had given up on her: they claimed they could do nothing for her except wait for her to lose her eye. Thankfully, we managed to pull her out of that hell. Today she fully enjoys her life, without any aftereffects and with her little eye completely healthy," wrote Enríquez Nodarse in his Facebook post.
Rocío suffered from an orbital lymphangioma—a benign but invasive tumor—in her left eye since she was eleven months old. For more than a decade, the Cuban health system did not provide her with any active treatment: the girl went through the William Soler, Juan Manuel Márquez, Ramón Pando Ferrer hospitals, and the Oncology Institute without receiving effective care.
Since he was four years old, Cuban doctors indicated that they would only intervene if the tumor burst. In 2018, specialists from Ramón Pando Ferrer issued a report acknowledging that the treatment was "incomplete, risky, and difficult" in Cuba due to a lack of technical conditions, while the Oncology Institute admitted it lacked experience in procedures such as ultrasound-guided percutaneous catheter drainage.
In July 2025, the situation was critical: Rocío had been experiencing recurrent bleeding in the affected eye for three months, severe headaches, and it had been three years since she had undergone a follow-up MRI.
The only palliative measures the Cuban system had offered were eye drops, cold compresses, and sporadic check-ups.
It was then that her mother, Adela Amparo Riverón Vega, turned to social media and independent media to raise awareness of the case. Enríquez Nodarse arranged for the girl's care in Spain, and mother and daughter arrived in Madrid on November 16, 2025.
Rocío was admitted to the Jiménez Díaz Foundation in Madrid, where she received specialized treatment through intravenous infusion. In May 2026, her mother confirmed that the girl was completely healthy following a magnetic resonance imaging scan with satisfactory results.
"In Cuba, I had been told that there was no solution, but God placed wonderful people in my path, and Spain welcomed us in a very special way," declared Adela Riverón Vega on that occasion.
Dr. Enríquez Nodarse had warned in May that the prognosis without intervention was devastating: "In the best-case scenario, Rocío was doomed to lose an eye. In the worst-case, to lose her life."
The case of Rocío is not the only one. Damir Ortiz, another Cuban child whose case was also handled by Enríquez Nodarse, passed away on April 5, 2025, at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami due to sepsis contracted in Cuban hospitals, a tragic outcome that underscores the severity of the deficiencies in the island's healthcare system.
"I hope that someday our country will have a robust, modern, and truly humane healthcare system, where no child —or any person— ever dies due to abandonment, negligence, or missed opportunities," wrote the exiled doctor.
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