Cuba is a tinderbox, ready to explode with a single spark. Food and fuel shortages have driven Cubans to desperation, but the collapse of the healthcare system may be that spark. Medicine and medical supplies are already scarce on the island, and the Castro dictatorship continues to export doctors and nurses to foreign countries as slave labor, causing severe medical personnel shortages on the island. Bad nutrition leads to bad health, and the Cuban people can only take so much of watching their children and their elderly relatives suffer the corruption of the Castro dictatorship.
Wendy Lazcano explains in Diario de Cuba (my translation):
‘The collapse of public health could spark an uprising in Cuba’
12,000 doctors left the public health system in 2022. “Many refuse to stay around and watch patients die due to the lack of medicine,” says Cuban doctor Alexander Figueredo.
The Cuban government, which for years has portrayed itself to the world as a medical powerhouse, has been experiencing a healthcare crisis that has worsened following the coronavirus pandemic.
The lack of supplies and a shortage of healthcare personnel have made diseases that were not a problem in Cuban hospitals years ago now untreatable. “In the long run, this decay will be the breeding ground for a social upheaval,” warns Cuban doctor Alexander Figueredo, who resides in the United States, in Los Puntos a las Íes.
Dengue fever is now one of the most common diseases in Cuba. This infection is practically controlled worldwide, and fatalities shouldn’t occur with the necessary measures, according to Figueredo.
“In Cuba, these cases are happening not only due to the lack of medical supplies but also due to the lack of food and hygiene,” explains the doctor in the interview.
Chronic cases requiring surgical treatment, oncological diseases, appendicitis, and sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis are also worrisome, of which there are no statistics in Cuba, according to Cuban doctor Lucio Enríquez Nodarse, residing in Spain.
“Cuban public health is no longer comparable to that of developed countries, as they claim. Infectious diseases are emerging due to a lack of control, especially sexually transmitted diseases. There are no condoms in Cuba, and the number of people with syphilis or HIV is unknown; there are no reagents to verify it. The person doesn’t know they’re sick and keeps transmitting the disease. That’s something that isn’t talked about,” says Enríquez.
The doctor believes that nothing is free and that “Cubans have paid the most expensive public health because they’ve been receiving an average salary of five or ten euros for three generations. Additionally, they’ve paid dearly with something priceless: freedom.”
According to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), around 12,000 doctors left the Cuban public health system last year due to job insecurity and lack of resources to provide service.
“Many have left the country or have chosen to work in other sectors. There are doctors who refuse to let their patients die due to lack of medication and decide not to participate in that decision,” explains Figueredo.
While the healthcare system collapses, the Cuban government continues to invest resources in tourism, building hotels instead of hospitals.
And of course, the money made by renting medical personnel to other countries is NOT used to meet the medical needs of ordinary Cubans but rather the needs of the dictatorship.