The «Manuel Ascunce Domenech» University Hospital in Camagüey published a statement on its Facebook page to address the allegations made by exiled independent journalist José Luis Tan Estrada, who had shared a video showing the hospital's restrooms with dirty floors, overflowing feces and urine, and destroyed toilets.
Instead of announcing concrete repair measures, the hospital management acknowledged the deficiencies of the building with a phrase that encapsulates the tone of the statement: "We are a hospital with moldy walls, but with strong foundations based on the wisdom of our staff and the sacrifices of each and every one of our workers."
The statement was accompanied by images of workers cleaning hallways, bathrooms, stairs, and clogged toilets, presented as evidence of the staff's "morale" and "commitment," rather than as a response to a health emergency.
To explain the deterioration, the institution resorted to the usual script of the regime: "We urge everyone to denounce the real causes of the lack of constructive intervention in each of these areas: the genocidal blockade, the suffocating economic and social policies imposed on our people."
Tan Estrada, who documents the conditions of the healthcare system in Camagüey, was directly disqualified by the institution: "Behind every photo and every comment, there is a real objective that is not to improve conditions but to discredit our system and our leaders. All of this is designed from outside the country and executed by traitors lacking knowledge and without the moral grounds for this type of allegations."
The closing of the statement was equally revealing: "We will not allow the genuine needs of our hospital to be used to attack the revolution."
Reports about Ascunce Domenech are neither recent nor isolated. In November 2025, collapses in the ceilings of the operating rooms forced the suspension of scheduled surgeries. At the beginning of 2026, sewage water was documented under patients' beds. In June of that year, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights released photographs showing greenish water on the floors, exposed wires, moss, and the presence of rodents in the outpatient surgery area.
In September, Tan Estrada published a video showing flooded bathrooms in the surgery room of the same hospital. Just four days before this new institutional statement, the journalist reported that an 85-year-old woman with lung cancer was suffering from an infestation of bedbugs in her bed, a situation worsened by blackouts that prevent laundry from being washed at temperatures that eliminate eggs and larvae.
This pattern of response —acknowledging deficiencies, attributing them to the embargo, and attacking the whistleblowers— is not new to the hospital or the system. In June 2026, in response to a previous complaint, the same institution replied with the phrase "Criticism is easy, but take a moment to think before you speak," without announcing any corrective measures. The MINSAP employed an identical scheme in February 2025 in response to complaints about the precarious conditions of another Cuban hospital.
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