Cuba. Medical Impotence

By: Pedro Corzo - 02/01/2026

Guest columnist.
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Castro's totalitarian regime has committed numerous crimes throughout its history, one of the biggest being those 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 human merchandise, a strategy derived from the proposal of a “revolutionary medicine” dictated in 1960 by the serial killer Ernesto “Che” Guevara, another great 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 product.

Insecticides have always been lacking, causing infestations of parasites such as bed bugs that force people to throw away the deteriorated mattresses and the few bedding items. Even more, these days I spoke with a relative who told me that when he woke up at night, he had the sensation that the disgusting little animal was coming out of his mouth.

The authorities do not collect the garbage systematically. Low-income neighborhoods have become veritable dumps and breeding grounds for disease, while septic tanks in homes overflow, affecting lives and contaminating the soil and groundwater—an environmental crime that is repeated even in the sewer system, which has large leaks due to lack of maintenance.

The health situation on the island, less than seven days before the government marks 67 years in power, is catastrophic. The charade of excellent medical services has crumbled on its own; the lie has been exposed.

In 2015, filmmaker Wenceslao Cruz directed a documentary for the Cuban Institute of Historical Memory against Totalitarianism entitled "Myth and Reality of Medicine in Cuba," under the advice of medical doctors Santiago Cárdenas and Omar Vento. The documentary includes testimonies showing that medical services under Castroism have given more priority to political management, both inside and outside the island, than to the health of citizens.

Among other testimonies is that of Dr. Darsi Ferrer, a prominent pro-democracy activist in Cuba, who said, “There is widespread and deep corruption in the medical service as a consequence of the injustices of the system. Patients have no rights in the face of malpractice, and the so-called Family Doctor program is one of the regime's biggest failures. Furthermore, the so-called internationalism has nothing to do with humanism; the dictatorship is fulfilling a political objective while receiving billions of dollars from the exploitation suffered by healthcare 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 in Cuban hospitals is beyond deplorable. There is a lack of everything: doctors, medicine, equipment, reagents, and everything imaginable. To this we must add the appalling food provided to patients, power outages, and lack of water. Patients hospitalized there depend on their families to send them from abroad what this much-vaunted medical powerhouse should be supplying.

Criminal negligence continues to produce tragedies like those currently unfolding 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 hotspots such as landfills and the accumulation of waste in neighborhoods for months.

Infectious diseases on the island fill a dictionary. The ever-present dengue fever, chikungunya, and oropouche have caused the deaths of at least dozens of people, a high number in a country where the authorities systematically lie about everything that affects them.

It is appropriate to denounce that, although Castroism is the main culprit for so many ills, 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 the trafficking of slaves.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».