HAVANA – Yonelkis Garcia, 44, a housewife and mother of two, finds it so difficult to travel to the hospital to treat her acute myeloid leukemia that she now spends a week at a facility.
Garcia has been under treatment at the Institute of Hematology and Immunology for a year and is grateful to have access to the hospital – one of the best on the communist-run island – but admits that even there he faces restrictions.
“It’s tough in every sense… sometimes the institute ran out of many medications, and I had to call my friends and family in other countries to send my medications,” Garcia said.
As Cuba’s economic crisis deepens and amid fuel shortages and darkness, hospitals are hit hard, leaving patients in the dark and medicine at risk of spoiling.
The Cuban government gave NBC News rare access inside the Institute of Hematology and Immunology, a research facility in the capital where they treat difficult cases from across the island.
Even at this top hospital, which has more resources than others across the island, doctors and nurses face the complexities of treating patients under severe restrictions.
“I haven’t lost patients because of this situation,” said Martin Hernandez Isas, a hematologist at the institute who travels 20 miles from his home to get there.
“They’ve done the possible and the impossible to come here,” he said of his patients. Hospital staff said their patients are lucky, but that’s not the case across the island.
Gloom and scarcity are not new to Cuba. A severe financial crisis has been unfolding since 2020, after President Donald Trump tightened economic sanctions in his first term, the coronavirus pandemic has crippled the island’s key tourism industry, and reduced shipments of fuel from close ally Venezuela are facing their own financial difficulties.
But Cuba’s economy has taken a hit in recent weeks from Trump’s oil embargo on the island, as his administration puts pressure on the Cuban government.
The lives of everyday Cubans are in disarray and now they are spinning while they have a few hours of power. But among the most vulnerable on the island are those dealing with illness.
Staff at the Institute of Hematology and Immunology must strategize, reorganize and adapt with schedules and work hours. The laboratories were working five days a week. Now they are down to two days to save fuel.
A major challenge for patients is access to transport from their homes. Some rely on electric tricycles or are lucky enough to be taken to hospital by someone. Others are forced to pay for a taxi, but the prices of the rides are out of reach for the average Cuban.
Availability of medicines for patients is a problem. “We have to resort to asking their relatives (for medicine) or buying it on the black market,” said Lucelia Leva Calderon, a doctor and deputy director of the hospital.
It is common for Cuban Americans to send medicine, syringes and other supplies to hospitalized relatives on the island.
Some doctors do what they have.
“With the 1 ml that one patient does not use, the 2 ml left from another patient’s bottle, we collect it together so that no one is left without their medication,” said Hernandez Isas.
“The blackout will affect us,” Hernandez said. He said that when there is a power outage in the hospital, the generator is switched on.
But fuel is not always available for the generator.
Sometimes he loses energy two or three times a day, said nurse Norma Fernandez. Outages last anywhere between one to 8 hours. This will affect medicines that need to be refrigerated, he said.
If the stop is only one hour, the drugs can be cold enough, but at eight hours, “it’s already difficult because the patients who come to the institution need some drugs and, the staff have to open the fridge and access the drugs,” Fernandez said.
Although the hospital has not reported any deaths from the shortage, it is a fear in the minds of many.
“It’s very difficult,” Leyva Calderon said. “The hardest thing for a doctor is to lose a patient. That’s one of the hardest things I think for everybody.”
