Havana, Cuba – It used to be a point of pride. At the William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana, more than 90 percent of the newborns who needed neonatal surgery survived their procedures.
But in recent months, Alioth Fernandez, the head of the hospital's surgical unit and anaesthesiology department, has witnessed an alarming decline.
“Now, that figure has plummeted,” Fernandez said. “In the first half of this year, we have seen very high mortality among newborns needing surgery, with more than half of the cases resulting in death.”
Fernandez is among a growing number of doctors and patients in Cuba expressing alarm over the deteriorating healthcare conditions across the island.
Six months ago, on January 29, United States President Donald Trump announced a fuel blockade against Cuba, threatening any country that exports fuel to the island with punishing tariffs.
The aim was to weaken Cuba's government, which Trump labelled a national security threat. Only one foreign oil tanker has reached Cuba in the months since.
The result has been nearly daily blackouts that last up to 20 hours, as well as shortages of essential items.
The pressure has exacerbated strains on Cuba's healthcare system, once considered the flagship achievement of the country's 1959 revolution.
Although healthcare in Cuba remains free, public and universal, experts say its reach and quality have diminished significantly. That has translated to a cost in human lives. Fernandez is seeing the toll of the political conflict firsthand in his young patients.
“Children are the least to blame,” Fernandez said. “Because children certainly have no ideology, nor did they ask to be born in a ‘communist’ country.”
For Fernandez, the most distressing part has been how avoidable some of the deaths have been.
Many did not occur as the result of surgical complications but rather from infections, driven by diminished hygiene standards, malnutrition and the limited availability of antibiotics.
In the past, Fernandez explained, patients were added to a waiting list for procedures, based on their medical conditions and the date of their arrival for treatment. Names rarely stayed on the list for more than a month. Backlogs were systematically cleared.
But with limited resources – from electricity outages to increasingly rare shipments of medicines and supplies – healthcare professionals say they are now forced to pick and choose whom to treat.
“Now, we have to play God. When you secure the resources for a single surgery, we have to decide who gets to be operated on,” Fernandez said.
“It’s an impossible situation because, ultimately, they are all just children.”
