'No Patient Deserves This': Doctors, Nurses Say Trump Blockade Is Killing Sick Cubans

The Trump administration's oil blockade of Cuba—an escalation of the 65-year US stranglehold on the socialist island's economy—is killing Cubans amid a severe shortage of electricity and critical basic medical supplies, doctors and nurses there told reporters this week.

"I can’t tell you how many deaths, but I’m sure there are more than in the same period last year,” Dr. Alioth Fernandez, chief anesthesiologist at William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana, told The New York Times in an article published Friday. “I see it in shift handovers, in colleagues’ comments, and in children I’ve operated on.”

Cuba's universal healthcare system is internationally known. Its "Army of White Coats" has been deployed around the world, both to provide routine and specialized care, as well as during emergencies such as the Haiti earthquake, Sierra Leone Ebola outbreak, and Covid-19 pandemic in Italy.

Despite decades of success under increasingly adverse conditions, Cuba's vaunted health system is under tremendous strain, due in no small part to the cumulative effects of generations of US economic sanctions.

"Since I was born, this is the most difficult time, without any doubt," José Carlos, a resident intern at Havana Cardiology Institute, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday. "We do everything with love to assist people, but the reality right now is that we don’t have enough resources."

The lack of fuel is limiting ambulance service and keeping many doctors and other medical professionals from commuting to hospitals that are canceling surgeries and discharging patients early. As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, more than 96,000 Cubans—including 11,000 children—are waiting for surgery due to the fuel shortage.

"Everything is hitting us—energy, resources, transportation," Carlos told the CBC.

When the lights go out, neonatal nurses use hand-pumped ventilators to keep infants alive. Without power, hospitals and clinics can't administer chemotherapy cycles or dialysis treatments.

“I don’t know how long we can keep going,” Xenia Álvarez, the mother of a 21-year-old man who suffers a rare genetic disease and requires full-time use of a ventilator, told The New York Times.

Shortages of basic medicines and supplies are forcing doctors to substitute medications, delay treatments, or even ask patients' relatives to find supplies themselves. Antibiotics, painkillers, and medications to treat chronic diseases are scarce, as are gloves, syringes, and diagnostic equipment. Hospital staff also report difficulty maintaining sterile conditions.

While the US government claims that humanitarian goods like medicine are exempt from sanctions, critics counter that the fuel blockade, along with severe restrictions on banking and shipping, effectively block many medical supplies from reaching the island. The Trump administration has also been pressuring countries into expelling the lifesaving Cuban medical teams, sparking widespread outrage and condemnation.

After the Fidel Castro-led revolution that ousted the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the United States imposed an economic embargo on the island that has been perennially condemned by an overwhelming majority of United Nations member states for 33 years. Cuba says US sanctions have cost its economy more than $200 billion in inflation-adjusted losses.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently admitted that the economic chokehold is meant to force political change in Cuba while simultaneously disparaging the Cuban economy as "dysfunctional."

Rubio also said that although President Donald Trump is currently focused on the US-Israeli war of choice on Iran—one of seven nations attacked since the self-proclaimed "president of peace" returned to the White House—he would "be doing something with Cuba very soon."

Trump said earlier this month that he believes he'll "be having the honor of taking Cuba," language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain.

In addition to patients, the crisis in Cuba is also taking a physical and psychological toll on Cuban doctors—who, even with a recent raise earn just 100 pesos, or about $2.40, per 12-hour shift. This, in a country in which a dozen eggs cost nearly $10. Many doctors rely upon side hustles to get by.

"Doctors' pay is just for basic things," said Carlos. "It doesn’t allow you to buy many things in the supermarket or go to a restaurant or a hotel, or things like that."

Breakdowns and burnout are on the rise.

"I've seen doctors cry," one physician, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Reuters. "With this crisis, they cry. They've stopped working, they've become depressed. You can see it on their faces."

Despite the worsening situation, Carlos told the CBC that he does not want to leave Cuba, and blamed the US for the crisis.

"The main cause of everything is the USA," he said. "I have no doubt about that."

Some do want to leave, blaming their own government as well the US embargo for Cuba's suffering. Others are taking things one day at a time.

"We don’t know what will happen," a nurse who gave only her first name, Rita, told the CBC, "so we just keep working."

The mounting—and preventable—deaths in Cuba are prompting renewed calls for the US to lift sanctions on Cuba.

"No patient deserves this. Trump's cruel Cuban blockade is killing people unnecessarily," National Nurses United, the largest US nurses' union, said on social media Friday. "Depriving Cubans of essential resources needed to sustain life and health is an unconscionable violation of human rights. Nurses say: End the blockade now!"

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) also weighed in during a Thursday floor speech in which she said that "Cuba poses no threat to us, yet we are strangling an entire nation with economic warfare."

"Families are going without food. Water systems are failing. Hospitals are struggling to stay open," she continued. "These tactics are designed to suffocate an island into submission. Make no mistake: This unconscionable suffering is occurring because Trump is trying to force regime change."

"Hands off Cuba," Omar added. "End the blockade now."