The Human Cost of U.S Sanctions

Belly of the Beast’s Liz Oliva Fernández and Drop Site’s Ryan Grim recently visited the William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana where they spoke with the chief anesthesiologist, Alioth Fernández, and the parents of some of his patients.

Cuba's public and free healthcare system was long considered one of the best in the world. Its doctors are top-notch, dedicated and caring. This is a story about what happens when the most powerful country in the world uses economic warfare to deprive a smaller country from obtaining the medicine it needs to save lives.

The Cuban government cannot access the international financial system, cannot import freely, cannot buy what its children need — not because of indifference, but because U.S. sanctions have destroyed the country’s economy and drained the public health budget.

When every dollar must be stretched across an entire population in crisis, children like Carlos are the ones who pay the price.

"It's not that the doctors don't want to help," his mother says. "It's that they can't."

TRANSCRIPT

“My son deserves to live”

Belly of the Beast’s Liz Oliva Fernández and Drop Site’s Ryan Grim recently visited the William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana, where they spoke with doctors and parents navigating severe shortages of medicine and equipment.

“We’ve been receiving care since my child was born because of his condition,” said Amnielys Cueto González, Carlos’s mother.

“At the hospital in Matanzas, just as here, from the moment we arrived, the doctors and nurses have been exceptional,” she added.

“Pancreatin has been the most difficult to find lately,” Cueto explained.

“The kind they used to have, Creon, was very good for kids like him. The one they gave us more recently wasn’t the same quality. It doesn’t work for him. I can’t sugarcoat that.”

“There are medications the country simply doesn’t have,” she continued.

“If they were available, we would have them, because the system has always given what it has to children like mine.”

“When a child needs a medication that isn’t produced by the Cuban pharmaceutical industry, a case file is prepared and the Ministry of Public Health tries to source it,” said Dr. Alioth Fernández, chief anesthesiologist at William Soler Pediatric Hospital.

“This usually involves medications that are expensive and difficult to obtain, not the kind that are normally available,” Fernández explained.

“But this has become much more difficult in recent years,” he added.

“In this case, we are talking about introducing a newly developed medication that Cuba has never had access to. It is nearly impossible to acquire right now. In fact, it is impossible, because there is no money to buy it.”

“When you have a hundred dollars, you have to decide how many people those hundred dollars can help,” he continued.

“And so smaller groups of children with very specific conditions get left behind, not because they are less important, but because resources are limited.”

“These are makeshift alternatives we have to use for something as basic as measuring urine output,” Fernández said, pointing to improvised equipment.

“There are no urine collection bags. Something that simple.”

“Sometimes people say the blockade doesn’t exist,” he noted.

“They point to cars, eggs, or chicken coming from the United States, but they don’t understand how those goods enter, or the financial mechanisms behind them.”

“Medical equipment is not something you buy in a store or pay for in cash,” he emphasized.

“You need access to banking, credit, and authorized transactions. And beyond the financial barriers, there are regulatory restrictions. Companies are not licensed to do business with Cuba. We are tied hand and foot.”

“There really are fewer resources,” Cueto said.

“Sometimes you arrive at the hospital and there isn’t even a basic surgical tool. Doctors try their best to find one, but there just isn’t one.”

“In the past, there were more options. Now, what’s available is what you use, even if it’s not what the child needs.”

“He always needs antibiotics for pseudomonas, a bacteria that lives with him permanently,” she explained.

“There wasn’t a single effective antibiotic available. What they had was Rocephin. That’s not what my child needed. He needed something stronger.”

“The country is in a fragile state,” Cueto added.

“It’s not necessarily the fault of one person. It’s the circumstances, the blockade, the conditions that exist.”

“Have there been cases where a blackout occurs while a child is connected to a ventilator without a battery?” the journalist asked.

“Yes, we’ve had those situations,” said Dr. Ailín Esperón Ramos, specialist in pediatric critical care and emergency medicine.

“Fortunately, we’ve managed to keep patients alive using self-inflating bags and the support of nurses,” she explained.

“But that only works when the outage is brief. If it’s prolonged, it can have serious consequences.”

“It’s agonizing,” Esperón said.

“You know the moment the power goes out, but you don’t know when it’s coming back.”

“When you have multiple ventilated patients, it becomes even more desperate, because the staff cannot always keep up,” she added.

“At least eight to ten hours of battery life would be necessary,” she noted.

“Thankfully, no one has died. But children have deteriorated.”

“When you switch from mechanical ventilation to manual ventilation, you lose the controlled parameters,” she explained.

“Patients worsen clinically, recovery takes longer, and complications like pneumothorax can occur. When you ventilate manually, you cannot precisely control pressure. And not all lungs respond the same way.”

“In medicine, mortality is not the only indicator,” Esperón emphasized.

“The fact that a patient survives does not mean conditions are acceptable. These setbacks happen every day.”

“Children need access to resources that already exist,” Cueto said in closing.

“The people are not to blame for political disagreements that ultimately affect us.”

“We are human beings. We need and deserve to live.”

“There are many children like mine who need medication, who could have a good quality of life, who could live many more years,” she concluded.

“Why deprive them? Some things cannot be undone. Life—you either have it, or you lose it.”