02 Jan Opinion – Cuba, Medical Impotence
By,
Pedro Corzo, Senior Fellow, MSI²
Castroist totalitarianism has committed numerous crimes throughout its history, one of the greatest being perpetrated in the health sector, although it is not the only one.
The Cuban dictatorship has used health professionals as an instrument of political influence and as human merchandise, a strategy derived from the proposal of a “revolutionary medicine” dictated in 1960 by the serial killer Ernesto “Che” Guevara, another major fraud of the absolutism that prevails in Cuba.
The population under totalitarianism has never been able to freely access the purchase of personal hygiene products, much less acquire disinfectants or any cleaning products.
Insecticides have always been lacking, causing infestations of parasites such as bedbugs that force people to throw away deteriorated mattresses and scarce bedding. Moreover, in recent days, I spoke with a relative who told me that when waking up at night, he had the sensation that the repulsive little animal was coming out of his mouth.
Authorities do not collect garbage in a systematic manner. Poor neighborhoods have become true garbage dumps and key points for the formation of infectious outbreaks, while household septic tanks overflow, affecting daily life and contaminating soil and groundwater, an environmental crime that is repeated even in the sewage system, which suffers major leaks due to a lack of maintenance.
The health situation on the Island, ruled for 67 years by those in power, is catastrophic. The farce of excellent medical services has collapsed on its own; the lie has been exposed.
In 2015, filmmaker Wenceslao Cruz directed a documentary for the Institute of Cuban Historical Memory Against Totalitarianism entitled “Myth and Reality of Medicine in Cuba,” under the guidance of physicians Santiago Cárdenas and Omar Vento, which includes testimonies showing that medical services under Castroism have prioritized political management, both inside and outside the Island, over citizens’ health.
Among these testimonies is that of physician Darsi Ferrer, a prominent activist in favor of democracy in Cuba, who stated: “In the medical service, there is widespread and deep corruption as a consequence of the injustices of the system. Patients have no rights in cases of malpractice, and the so-called Family Doctor is one of the greatest failures of the regime. Moreover, the so-called internationalism has nothing to do with humanism; the dictatorship fulfills a political objective while receiving billions of dollars from the exploitation suffered by health professionals.”
That graphic denunciation from ten years ago is reaffirmed by the tragic health situation that prevails on the Island of the generals and doctors of Castroism.
The situation of Cuban hospitals is more than deplorable. There is a lack of everything, doctors, medicines, equipment, reagents, and everything imaginable, added to the poor food provided to patients, power outages, and lack of water. Hospitalized patients who hope to survive require their relatives to send them from abroad what the much-vaunted medical power was supposed to provide.
Criminal neglect continues to produce tragedies such as those currently occurring with the epidemic of several mosquito-borne viruses proliferating on the Island, compounded by the lack of insecticides and the negligence of public officials who fail to eliminate infectious sources such as landfills and the accumulation of waste in neighborhoods for months.
Infectious diseases on the Island fill a dictionary. Ever-present dengue, chikungunya, and Oropouche have caused the deaths of at least dozens of people, a high number in a country where authorities systematically lie about everything that affects them.
It is appropriate to denounce that, although Castroism is the main culprit of so many ailments, it has not lacked foreign accomplices in the commission of these crimes, among them the Pan American Health Organization, which has been sued for human trafficking by Cuban doctors who participated in the so-called missions, a subterfuge of totalitarianism and its allies to disguise slave trafficking.es to come.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).