A woman returned home without treatment after going to the Héroes del Baire hospital in Isla de la Juventud in the early morning, where, according to her son, the on-duty doctor said he didn't know what to prescribe because there were no resources.
Ángel Orlando Baños Adela posted the testimony on Facebook, recounting that his mother began suffering from repeated vomiting and episodes of diarrhea during the early hours of Friday. Unable to secure an ambulance, a neighbor decided to accompany her to the hospital, where they arrived around 3:00 a.m.
According to the complaint, the failures in the telephone service during the blackouts and the uncertainty regarding the availability of fuel hindered access to medical transportation.
In the emergency room, the doctor instructed the patient to receive an IV. However, according to Baños' account, the liquid they offered was "just water" and did not provide an effective response to her symptoms.
"How is it possible for a person to arrive at an emergency room with repeated vomiting, diarrhea, and pain, and end up going home without a solution because supposedly there are no resources?" questioned the whistleblower, who noted that his mother managed to recover on her own, although he warned that others may not be as lucky.
The post received dozens of comments, some of which shared similar experiences within the Cuban healthcare system. One person claimed that their father died in the intensive care unit of the same hospital due to a lack of serum, while another recounted that their aunt passed away from a heart attack after waiting three hours for an ambulance in La Fe.
A resident of Havana also recounted that he went to the emergency room due to a severe skin poisoning, and the doctor told him that "no one dies from something on the skin," in addition to informing him that he didn't have any hydrocortisone available.
"It's already forbidden to get sick in Cuba, but we keep holding on as if nothing is happening," wrote a user. Another attributed the responsibility for these situations to the healthcare system and not to the doctors and nurses who work under scarce conditions.
Baños summarized his complaint with a critique of the conditions faced by patients seeking assistance. "The health of a community cannot depend on luck, on the availability of fuel to get to the hospital, or on placing one's faith in God because there are no resources to care for the sick," he wrote.
In February, in statements to the AP agency, the Minister of Public Health José Ángel Portal Miranda stated that the Cuban healthcare system was on the brink of collapse, and that there were no short-term solutions in sight.
For his part, the leader Miguel Díaz-Canel admitted in August that only 30% of the inventory of essential medicines was available.
The Héroes del Baire hospital has been at the center of other allegations. In August, María Luisa Mendoza, 27, and sister of Cuban pitcher Héctor Mendoza, died at that facility after being admitted with hemorrhagic dengue. According to information published at the time, there was no serum available, so her family went out to find it. When they returned, the patient suffered a cardiac arrest.
In October, another case raised questions about the functioning of emergency transportation in the municipality. An elderly man died after waiting eight hours for an ambulance from the Integrated Medical Emergency System (SIUM) at the medical post in La Demajagua. The official explanation was that the unit did not have enough fuel to reach the location and return.
In September, the municipal director of Health acknowledged that the hospital was facing a shortage of specialists in 10 areas, technological degradation, and low coverage of medications and supplies.
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