Communist Cuba, the self-proclaimed “medical powerhouse” so admired by the American left, does not have the resources for medication or facilities to treat all its cancer patients. It does, however, have enough money to build luxury hotels and offer health tourism for foreigners who have the cash to pay for it. This is socialism in action.
Via Diario de Cuba (my translation):
Although Diaz-Canel claims otherwise, cancer patients are not getting the attention they deserve
Despite evidence of a growing shortage of medications and supplies to tackle cancer, amidst a comprehensive breakdown of the Cuban healthcare system, ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel asserts that Cuba provides the attention each patient deserves.
“On World Cancer Day, our solidarity goes out to all those battling this difficult disease. Cuba, amidst a genocidal blockade, will continue providing the attention each patient deserves, and we will not cease the development of cancer medications,” he said in a post on the social network X.
In this context, Dr. Jorge Álvarez Blanco, head of the Provincial Oncology Group of Sancti Spíritus, told the local newspaper Escambray that more than 2,000 people from Sancti Spíritus are diagnosed with this condition annually. In the province. According to Álvarez Blanco, there are, on average, over 1,000 deaths each year as a result of cancer, making it the second leading cause of death, after cardiovascular diseases, in that territory of the island.
In Cuba, about 50,000 cancer patients are reported annually, and the main factors affecting those suffering from this disease include access to necessary drugs, the deterioration of hospital facilities, the lack of specialized equipment, and the emigration of the best specialists.
Díaz-Canel’s words ring hollow, and it lacks credibility that the Cuban government ensures “the attention each patient deserves,” when increasingly patients have to rely on relatives or friends abroad or even seek help through social networks to obtain any medication.
Recently, Kleydis Valdivia Velasco, a Cuban residing in Miami, organized a fundraiser through the Gofundme platform to assist her sister in Cuba. “I’m asking for help for my sister, a single mother who urgently needs assistance to get a medication. She has stage 4 lung cancer with brain metastases and a reserved prognosis because it is too advanced. Her only hope is to take a pill called Tagrisso, which costs $10,000 a month,” Valdivia detailed.
Another case is that of Idania Ramírez, a 33-year-old Cuban who has cancer and cannot be treated in Cuba. The young woman, residing in Bahía Honda municipality in the Artemisa province, appealed for help through her Facebook profile to try to reach the US and receive treatment there.
“I’ve been battling and trusting in God for many months. Today, after receiving two different treatments with the few medications left in the country, as everyone knows, the resources at the hospital to fight this non-Hodgkin large B-cell lymphoma have been depleted. It’s complicated, the doctors just confirmed that there are tests that are not available here, including surgery, due to the low resources,” Ramirez explained about her illness.
On Facebook, Cuban Madelín Torres denounced the situation of a mother from Holguín who has been waiting for over five months for her son to be treated for nose cancer. “We left home on September 2nd (2023), the child didn’t even start school, because of a supposed sinusitis. They sent us to the city of Holguín, and there they operated on the child. It turns out that when they delved deeper, they found a tumor in the nose. We were in Holguín for three months waiting for an ambulance to transfer us here, to William Soler (Pediatric Hospital of Havana),” explained the mother of the child, who was not identified by Torres in a video.
“It’s been a month and a half since they transferred us here to William Soler, and nothing has happened,” continued the mother. “My child has a tumor, and they are still looking for the resources for that surgery, but they haven’t told us what types of resources are needed yet.”
The Statistical Yearbook of Cuba reflected that by the end of 2021, 26,791 people had died due to this disease. Of these, 15,450 were men and 11,341 were women.
Among men, cancer is a leading cause of death mainly when it appears in the prostate, trachea, bronchus, and lung. In females, it frequently arises in the breast and parts of the uterus and cervix.