HAVANA, Cuba. – Cuban hospitals are preparing for the possibility of reducing their services to a minimum and prioritizing exclusively emergency care, due to the serious shortage of medical supplies and fuel that the country is experiencing.
A director of the “Hermanos Ameijeiras” Clinical Surgical hospital in Havana assured CubaNet that the availability of resources has been reduced practically to zero, being reserved only for urgent interventions that compromise the patient’s life.
“There is no availability of food for workers and consultations will be reduced. They are considering suspending those that are not a priority, at least until the situation with the lack of fuel eases,” the source explained under conditions of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “It is a delicate situation,” he said.
From the La Covadonga hospital, another specialist compared the current scenario with that experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is very similar, but at that time we knew that it was temporary. Now there is no way of knowing how long this context will last, which can make patients who are waiting for necessary surgeries, although not classified as life-threatening, suffer a lot,” he said.
This Thursday, meetings were held with several directors of the Ministry of Public Health, in which a package of measures was advanced that will be applied in the face of fuel shortages, he also told CubaNet the fountain of the Amejeiras Brothers.
Several of these actions will be related to the operation of public health services, which already operate with minimal inputs.
The lack of resources has forced numerous patients to purchase medications on the informal market or to pay “outside” to advance appointments on waiting lists for elective surgeries.
This Thursday, the Cuban ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel made statements to the official press in which he recognized the seriousness of the energy crisis and announced a new package of measures. He also recognized that the Island has not received more oil from Venezuela after the capture of Nicolás Maduro in the military operation in which 32 Cuban soldiers died.
According to the president, the fuel shortage has had direct consequences in key sectors, including transportation and health.
As a result, public transportation was practically paralyzed this Thursday in Havana, while thousands of people remained crowded at bus stops that never ran.
The Cuban health system is thus emerging as another collateral damage of the economic collapse that the country is going through, marked by the lack of sustained investments in basic services and the injection of state resources into the tourism sector.
