Medical ethics in Cuba

If you’re planning to travel to Cuba as a national from a country that has signed agreements with Cuba, here’s a macabre story that should give you pause:

The family of Beatriz Porco Calle, a young Bolivian girl who died from a rare illness while she was studying in Cuba, denounced that the Cuban government removed her brain and several internal organs before shipping the body back to Bolivia.
Local authorities told Bolivian newspaper Los Tiempos that they are investigating the case.
Sofia Porco Calle, a sister of the victim, told Los Tiempos that the Cuban Embassy in Bolivia notified the relatives that the girl had died, and told them that her body was going to be shipped back to Bolivia.
Sofia held a news conference where she said that all the other Bolivian students who were part of her sister’s group, returned on the same flight that carried her sister’s body back to her native country.
“I felt very bad, all the students were embracing their relatives but I received a coffin with my sister in it,” she said.
The woman told the newspaper that several Cuban officials who came on the same flight wanted to take the body of her sister to another city to conduct an autopsy, but the family intervened and didn’t allow the body to be moved.
“The autopsy was performed at the Hospital de Clinicas. My little sister’s body didn’t have any organs, teeth, eyes, it was without her tongue. There was a sponge in place of her brain and more sponges in her stomach,” the woman said during the press conference.
The most incredible part of the story is that Cuban officials told the relatives of the dead student, that the deal that they signed with the Bolivian government says that those students who die while in Cuba will be sent back without their organs.

Trafficking in human organs, hiding the cause of death? Follow the story at The Real Cuba: