Cuba plague update: Death rate climbs, no room at hospitals, no medicine, black market healthcare thriving

From our Bureau of Socialist Health Care and Social Justice Black Markets

Wait a minute. What does “black market in health care” mean? Or a “social justice black market.” Castrogonia has superior FREE health care, and its medical system is so excellent and its medical personnel so abundant that the socialist island nation actually exports doctors and nurses to other countries.

Ha. Gotcha! The Big Lie about Castrogonia’s so-called FREE health care is being exposed in a big way as the COVID plague sweeps through the island.

Here is the situation in a nutshell: since the health care system is really abysmally awful, the law of supply and demand has taken over. With no medicines available through that system, and no hospital beds, the black market has gone into high gear. That black market has always existed beneath the socialist veneer, but now, with death knocking at the door and panic setting in, that alternative economy has suddenly mushroomed, along with the corruption needed to make it function.

You want medicine? Pay extra, out of sight. You want a hospital bed? Pay extra, under the table. A hospital bed can be bought for 1,000 pesos. You don’t have the money? Too bad, sucker. Go die. You want your mom buried? Pay up or she goes into a mass grave, maybe in your own backyard or that of some neighbor..

This is socialism at work, socialism at its very, very best.

Loosely translated from Marti Noticias

Cubans from the island expressed their concern this Wednesday about the rise in the number of deaths from COVID-19 and the persistent lack of information transparency from the authorities about the health crisis facing the country.

Interviewees told Radio Televisión Martí that, in the midst of that crisis, the black market for medicines has increased, and even beds for admission to hospitals for patients with coronavirus, while state institutions remain silent.

Henry Couto Guzmán, an activist from the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) in the city of Guantánamo, was admitted since July 30 with COVID-19 at the Dr. Agostinho Neto provincial hospital.

“There was no bed and I spent two days in the corridors of the hospital. People are dying from lack of oxygen and lack of medicines, I am a witness to this. And the government does not say that they die from COVID-19, they put on the papers that he died of respiratory arrest, “said the activist.

According to Couto Guzmán, “a packet of azithromycin costs more than 3 pesos in the black market,” Henry explained.

In the city of Ciego de Ávila, on Tuesday, the self-employed José Carlos Fernández visited the Antonio Luaces Iraola general hospital.

“There are people who are dying on the stretchers, lying in the corridors; the deceased become rigid because they spend hours and do not come to pick it up from the funeral home, “he said.

Also in the Avilanian territory, journalist Dairis González Ravelo highlights the collapse of health institutions, especially the Roberto Rodríguez hospital in Morón.

“Up to 14 people are dying every day in the municipality of Morón, and up to four people share an oxygen balloon at the hospital. Imagine that even solving a bed for an income costs 1,000 pesos here, “said the communicator.

In Matanzas, in the municipality of Jagüey Grande, the Iluminado Rodríguez hospital collapsed, reported the director of the independent newspaper El Cocodrilo Callejero, Martha Lisset Sánchez Solís.

“The medical institution no longer has beds available, and the provincial crematorium is saturated,” she said.

Continue reading HERE in Spanish