Cuban doctors voice rare criticism of government’s handling of COVID-19

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Following widespread anti-government protests last month, the Cuban government is now receiving unprecedented criticism from healthcare workers who say authorities have botched the island’s response to the pandemic.

Symbols of the socialist health care system pioneered by Fidel Castro, doctors and nurses are widely hailed as “heroes in white coats” by the island’s state media.

In recent years, Cuban healthcare workers have also become a major generator of hard currency for the Communist government, which sells its services to countries in need of doctors.

But as Cuba faces drug and oxygen shortages and hospitals inundated with coronavirus cases, tensions between the government and healthcare workers – who are required to work for the state – have boiled over. .

During an August visit to the hard-hit province of Cienfuegos, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz blamed the lack of discipline and “mistakes” by healthcare workers for the breakdown of medical services.

Marrero acknowledged that residents also complained about a lack of medication, but said “they are inferior to complaints of abuse, neglect or that [doctors] do not make visits. It’s incredible!”

The comments sparked a storm among healthcare workers who bore the brunt of the pandemic in Cuba, often while having to buy their own protective gear and explain to COVID-19 patients why hospitals are running out of drugs and basic beds.

The Cuban government blames the U.S. embargo for health system failures, but critics point out that the same U.S. economic sanctions don’t stop the government from investing in a slew of shiny new hotels.

“We are just asking that they tell the truth,” said Dr Rosell Alberteris, in a video posted online. “We only ask for the supplies necessary to treat our patients with dignity and decorum.”

“We want to keep working, we want to keep saving lives,” Dr Daily Almaguer said in the video. “We are not responsible for the health collapse in our country.”

At least 39 health workers have posted videos online from Holguín, a town of nearly 300,000 people near the small town where Fidel and Raul Castro were born, complaining about appalling conditions in hospitals overrun by COVID-19 .

Some doctors have recorded videos from inside their hospitals, barely speaking in low voices as they criticized their government’s failures.

More and more Cuban doctors and nurses on social media across the island have expressed their support for the protest online, which is all the more remarkable given that the Cuban government announced on Tuesday new draconian measures banning “fake news” and publications that harm the life of the island. “prestige.”

“We are not afraid of the pandemic, we are afraid of the government,” Dr Rafael Alejandro Fuentes Sanchez said in another video posted online. “How could they interpret that we came out to claim our rights and the people’s right to receive good medical care.”

The main Cuban newspaper, the Communist Party Daily Granma, said health workers were being used in “new enemy campaigns” and had become spokespersons for an “anti-Cuban offensive”.

Cuban officials have also sought to defuse the confrontation with their frontline workers as the island’s failing health system faces the most precarious moment of the pandemic to date.

“Each time, it seems that we are tired, exhausted, beaten by this long period of pandemic,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on Twitter. “We think about how much our doctors and nurses have given.”

Authorities have started bringing back brigades of Cuban healthcare workers from overseas assignments and admit the situation is far worse than the island’s statistics suggest.

Amid a testing shortage, Cuban Health Minister José Angel Portal Miranda told the public newspaper Invasor that only people who tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of death are counted as having died from the coronavirus. .

“Not all deaths are able to take or get a PCR result,” the newspaper concluded. “Death sometimes comes first.”

Magdiel Jorge Castro told CNN his grandfather died on Wednesday after being discharged from Holguín hospital where he was unable to receive the results of a COVID-19 test he spent a few days longer early. The oxygen had run out in the hospital.

Castro said his grandfather suffered from fever and fatigue and other members of his family suffered from COVID-19-like symptoms. After his grandfather’s death, Castro said his family struggled to bury him.

“The funeral services are in collapse. There are no coffins,” Castro said. “My family was desperate to have one person died for 15 hours in bed in the tropical heat. The funeral home said there were 16 cases like hers, people with no place to be buried.”

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