The Díaz-Canel government, perpetuator of the disaster created by Fidel Castro, has successfully turned Cuba into an ecosystem hostile to health, rehabilitation and life.
HAVANA.- At the height of the economic and humanitarian crisis of the 1990s, known as Special Periodan epidemic of blindness spread among the Cuban population. Fidel Castro did not believe the alert issued by the prestigious epidemiologist Héctor Terry Molinet, who assured that the problem was due to a severe deficiency of B complex vitamins, something that the Commander was not willing to publicly acknowledge. After thirty years blaming the United States for everything bad that appeared in the largest of the Antilles – including the dengue hemorrhagic fever outbreak of 1981 – Dr. Terry’s conclusion could tell the world that Castro had pushed his people into malnutrition and disease.
The doctor was dismissed and his report shelved, but the disease persisted and worsened until it sounded the alarm bells of the World Health Organization. According to an article published by the BBCAmerican ophthalmologist Alfredo Sadun was consulted about what appeared to be a viral infection affecting the optic nerve, and was asked to travel to Cuba to investigate the case.
Fidel Castro reluctantly accepted what he considered interference. By the time the American doctor and his team began the investigation, 50,000 Cubans had become partially or totally blind. After noticing that the patients examined had a significant weight loss in common, they soon confirmed that the cause of the optic neuropathy suffered by the population was a mixture of nutritional deficiency and consumption of homemade rum with traces of methanol.
It was then that the dictator, on the doctor’s recommendation, ordered the massive manufacturing and distribution of folic acid and vitamin B supplements. The famine of the 1990s triggered other neuropathies, but Castro assured that the Cuban health system was prepared to face a danger that could have been managed in advance thanks to Dr. Terry, who died in 2021 without having been vindicated. Dr. Alfredo Sadun, on the other hand, was honored in 2002 with the Medal of Honor from the Cuban Academy of Sciences.
Political voluntarism manifested itself again with the pandemic Covid-19which took place under strict surveillance during his first year of whipping. With the reopening of the borders and the introduction of the Delta strain in the country, the disease got out of control and caused high mortality in 2021. The government headed by Miguel Díaz-Canel launched four vaccine candidates while hospitals ran out of medicinal oxygen and antibiotics; He built hotels while therapy rooms collapsed and imported several batches of vehicles for the national police and tourism, while Cubans died from lack of air in their homes, without ambulances to transport them to health centers.
With a peak of almost one hundred daily deaths (officially admitted) and knowing in advance that medicinal oxygen and respirators were essential, it was not until August that the plant producing this gas in Camagüey, the only one of its kind on the island, was repaired. Mechanical respirators were the responsibility of Creole inventiveness, because the same government that built hotels and imported modern cars did not have the money to buy the ones it needed.
In mid-2025 the municipality of Perico, in Matanzaswarned on social networks of a mysterious virus that affected several neighbors on the same block. Soon after, whole apples fell. The outbreak spread to surrounding municipalities until, finally, Matanzas asked for help while the authorities of the Ministry of Public Health stated that there was no reason to be alarmed and the regime organized marches in support of Palestine.
The “nonspecific febrile syndrome” continued to advance due to the MINSAP’s delinquency. People warned about deaths from unexplained causes and it was then that a commission of specialists traveled to Matanzas, but it was too late; Other provinces reported cases of high fever, terrible joint pain and dehydration. Dr. Carilda Peña – Vice Minister of Public Health – revealed that the more aggressive dengue serotype 4 was circulating, and the expansion of the chikungunya virus was confirmed.
Four months after Perico’s cry, which the authorities minimized, Dr. Francisco Durán – National Director of Hygiene and Epidemiology – has declared a chikungunya epidemic on the island, with thousands of cases reported daily, as well as the increase in serious, critical and deceased patients, including those under 18 years of age. The Pan American Health Organization, for its part, has identified Cuba as the country with the highest rate of chikungunya infestation in the entire American continent.
Once again, those who decide the fate of the nation downplayed the warning from citizens and more than one expert who warned that something out of the ordinary was happening. Once again the health and lives of Cubans were left unprotected while the government squandered money on other people’s causes. With the country in ruins and an overwhelmed health system, the Cuban people, who today suffer from a nutritional deficit similar to or worse than that of the 1990s, without access to basic medicines, overwhelmed by blackouts, inflation and shortages of all kinds, endure physical consequences that barely allow them to go out to “fight” for a meager livelihood to avoid dying.
The day that justice is finally done in this country, the criminal courts will not be able to judge those responsible – direct and indirect – for so much negligence, criminal complicity and institutional helplessness with fatal consequences. The Díaz-Canel government, perpetuator of the disaster created by Fidel Castro, has successfully turned Cuba into an ecosystem hostile to health, rehabilitation and life.
