At least 13 patients at a psychiatric hospital in Holguin, Cuba died last week. The exact causes of death are not known, but what we do know is none of them were receiving adequate care from the communist healthcare system.
At least 13 Cuban psychiatric patients died last week at the Holguín Psychiatric Hospital
How psychiatry is weaponized in Cuba.
There are reports from different health care professionals in Holguin on the cause of the deaths: two cited “bronchopneumonia and bronchial aspiration”, and another cited that they had “died from malnutrition, anemia and bronchopneumonia, and “in short, due to poor care,” said one of the doctors, who also alluded to the cold and the lack of supplies suffered by the victims.
News of this kind has previously been reported from Cuba.
Images from Havana’s psychiatric hospital, known as Mazorra, that were smuggled out in January 2010, for instance, revealed that the inmates had endured terrible suffering, and were dying from exposure to the elements. Claudia Cadelo, who is currently outside of Cuba but was living there at the time, wrote in 2010 on how she felt after seeing these pictures:
When I opened the little folder called “Mazorra” a series of monstrosities hit me in the face and I couldn’t stop looking at the cruel graphic testimony. A friend who is a doctor visited and while he analyzed images I didn’t have the courage to look at, expressions like, “Holy Virgin Mary, Blessed God, What in God’s name is this?” issued from his outraged throat, mixed with obscure pathologies and the names of diseases both treatable and curable. Enormous livers, tubercular lungs, and wormy intestines are the proof, Senora Arlin, of the sacredness of life in Cuba. Meanwhile The Roundtable throws a fit because the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo has unmasked a crumbling public health system, and they try to cover up the disgrace of seeing soldiers dragging and beating a group of women dressed in white with flowers in their hands. I ask myself, Gentlemen Journalists, when will they explain to Cubans the reasons why twenty-six mentally incapacitated people died in inhumane conditions during their confinement in Mazorra?
Thanks to the brave independent journalists who made the photographs public and the still-unknown whistleblower who revealed what had occurred, Havana was compelled to admit what had occurred.
