Communist Cuba, the “medical power” lauded by American leftists, not only can’t provide medical care and medicine to patients, they can’t even feed them. At a psychiatric hospital in the Cuban province of Granma, Cubans are denouncing how patients are being “starved to death” due to malnutrition while under the care of the Castro dictatorship. This is socialism in action.
Via Diario de Cuba (my translation):
‘They’re starving them to death’: A critical situation for psychiatric patients in Granma
Long-term patients at the Manuel Fajardo Rivero Psychiatric Hospital in Manzanillo, Granma province, are suffering from malnutrition due to the poor quality of food provided in the medical center. This was reported on Facebook by Lucía Martínez Carrazana.
“I am publicly denouncing the critical situation faced by long-term psychiatric patients at the Manuel Fajardo Rivero Psychiatric Hospital in Manzanillo. In one sentence: they are being starved to death. These long-term patients have no family and have been in the hospital for many years. This is their home,” explained Martínez.
“The majority of them are extremely thin, malnourished due to lack of food, they are famished from the daily hunger, their bones and skin are visible, and their bellies are swollen. They cry in the hallways asking for food, and the hospital does not have the means to meet their needs. The clothing and bedding are in poor condition, they suffer from the heat, and there are no fans in the rooms. Some are attempting suicide and others are falling ill, like this one who has bacterial bronchopneumonia due to lowered immunity,” the woman said, including several photographs of a patient from the center.
Martínez stated that this situation “is well known by the Provincial Directorate of Public Health, the Communist Party, and the Government of Granma, and there is no response, in addition to the shortage of medications for their treatments.”
Martínez called on all individuals to help address the situation, which she considers “a crime against humanity.” Her goal is for the case to reach “the presidency of the Cuban Government, the Ministry of Public Health, the National Assembly, the World Health Organization, or the Council of Human Rights, so that these patients, who are human beings and not dogs, are fed and cared for as they deserve.”
Virjinia Reyes Torres commented on Martínez’s post: “It’s inhumane what they do to these defenseless people, may God have mercy on them.” When commenting on the case of her father, a former patient of the Manuel Fajardo Rivero Psychiatric Hospital, Mercedes Almaguer added regarding the prevailing situation there: “I had to ask for help, clean sheets, and clothes, and argue on many occasions, even to the point of requesting discharge to prevent something worse. I fought for many years for my father. They are human beings, people who we take there to improve their sad lives.”
In December 2019, DIARIO DE CUBA reported on the hardship faced by a psychiatric patient. Without medication or an institution willing to admit him, the patient terrified neighbors in Havana. His sister said she even called the Council of State and held the Ministry of Public Health responsible for whatever might happen to him.
Sorry. They’re no use to the “revolution” and a burden to it. There are other priorities.