A Holguín family shares their desperation over the shortage of products to fight the invasion.
14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguín, 23 July 2025 — “He who blinks loses,” repeats Joel, as he explains his discomfort at having bought only one tube of permethrin, just before the bedbug infestation ravaging the city of Holguín caused the medication to disappear from the black market. “That same night I felt the first bites, and since then I haven’t slept a full night.”
“It was my wife who warned me they were bedbugs,” the 49-year-old Holguín resident told 14ymedio. “I thought they were mosquitoes, but she turned on the light and showed me the mattress seam, which was full of bugs.” It was a matter of days, or even hours, before the insects reached Joel and his family’s home. “We had heard the neighbors say their houses were infested, and we even saw some people throwing away their mattresses.”
“We take extreme hygiene measures because our child is autistic and also suffers from several severe allergies.”
Despite the stories they heard, Joel and his wife thought they wouldn’t be affected by the epidemic. “We take extreme hygiene measures because our son is autistic and also suffers from several severe allergies,” he tells this newspaper. “That’s why we’re constantly cleaning, washing, boiling bed linens, and dusting furniture.” However, the plague bypassed all those “safety rings,” he admits.
The bedbug, an insect that feeds on the blood of humans and other animals, has become an unwelcome visitor in many Cuban homes, where overcrowding, a lack of cleaning products, and poverty have multiplied its appearances in recent years. Outbreaks in provinces such as Santiago de Cuba, Sancti Spíritus , and Havana have become frequent news in the island’s independent media.
“There’s nothing in any state pharmacy to treat this; you have to go to the black market or a private sales stand.”
One of the main problems faced by those affected by the arrival of these pesky insects is the lack of products to repel the infestation. “No state pharmacy has anything to treat this; you have to go to the black market or a private sales stand that, although not authorized to sell medicines, may have these types of products.”
Although the bed bug is a common insect in tropical areas, its spread into Cuban homes has coincided with the economic crisis, the loss of purchasing power of many families who can no longer maintain the hygiene they once had, and the collapse of the public health system, which is influencing the decline in the supply of pharmaceutical products.
Now, even at the city’s main private sales fairs and informal sales networks, permethrin “has disappeared,” Joel says of the insecticide, acaricide, and insect and lice repellent. “I went back to buy more and they told me they were out of stock and that customers kept coming in asking for the same thing.”
They took the mattress out onto the patio “so it gets sun all morning to see if the bugs go away.”
To avoid sitting idly by waiting for the medication to reappear, Joel and his wife moved the mattress out onto the patio “to get some sun all morning to see if the bugs go away.” But the experience of some nearby neighbors doesn’t offer much hope. “In this neighborhood, some people have had to burn their sofas, throw their mattresses into the river, and throw away their pillows; nothing is safe.”
Desperation is also dangerous. Last March, a burning mattress ended up causing a fire that affected residents of the Villanueva and La Aduana neighborhoods. The flames spread from a garbage dump to the riverbank and into the waters of the Miradero River, contaminated by fuel oil spilled by a nearby factory. Shortly afterward, it was discovered that the mattress had been infested with bedbugs.
“He who blinks loses”
The luckiest Holguín residents can appeal to their relatives abroad to buy them a tube of cream, similar to the one Joel bought for about 600 pesos, for about $15 on one of the many commercial websites that offer food and medicine delivery on the island.
“He who blinks loses,” the man repeats, and after blaming himself for his shortsightedness, having bought only one tube of the cream. He ends up mixing the syllables into a litany that torments him as he checks the mattress under the July sun. “He who blinks loses ,” he concludes.
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