The doctor has also been part of medical brigades in Venezuela, Pakistan and Brazil
14ymedio, Havana, 26 October 2025 — Cuban doctor Yamilet Castañeda was arrested for stealing medications in South Africa. According to a report published this Saturday by the Police Service of that country, the event occurred on September 2, when the 54-year-old woman was checked by a guard at the hospital where she practices in Thabazimbi, in the province of Limpopo, in the north of the country. During the “routine” check, “unauthorized” drugs were found in her bag, so she was taken to her office, where another search turned up more drugs.
According to the report, the woman, born in Camagüey according to her Facebook profile, was accused by the police, and more than a month and a half later, “after the investigation, the suspect was apprehended upon her return to South Africa from Cuba on October22.”
One day later, Yamilet Castañeda appeared before the Thabazimbi Magistrate’s Court and was subsequently released “with a warning,” as the investigation continues. The case was postponed until October 28 “for further presentation of evidence.”
The police report states that she was subsequently released “with a warning”
The doctor, very active on social networks, posted photographs of her workplace and pointed out that she has been part of medical brigades in Venezuela, Pakistan and Brazil, as well as South Africa, “countries that have allowed me to grow professionally and personally.”
She also said that the medical profession chose “to bully” her because “I had no vocation for it, and those who know me know that I prefer the arts.” She even said that she did some “group B and C entrance tests. My first choice was Journalism, but they chose Medicine for me.* Otherwise I would be who knows where and writing who knows what.”
She also praised South Africa, “which has made me fall in love with my profession and taken me to the limit, but with effort I have managed, although I know that I still have a long way to go.”
Some South Africans have reacted to the news on social media. South Africa Vibes reports that the arrest “has sparked public outrage and rekindled debate about why the South African government continues to hire foreign doctors, especially Cubans, while hundreds of South African medical school graduates remain unemployed.”
The arrest “has sparked public outrage and rekindled debate on why the South African government continues to hire foreign doctors”
The message adds that “for years, government officials have defended the controversial medical cooperation program between Cuba and South Africa, arguing that it covers the shortage of qualified professionals in rural hospitals. However, critics argue that it is an insult to local talent, and now incidents like this raise questions about accountability, background checks and fairness in public health recruitment.”
At the beginning of 2024, South Africa estimated that nearly 700 national doctors were unable to find employment in the public sector, a figure which the government said was better than last year’s figure of 800.
“It is simply strange that we spend so much money on training local doctors and that so many of them are unemployed,” said Jack Bloom, a local politician and member of the Democratic Alliance, who has been monitoring and denouncing the hiring of doctors from Havana for years.
“It’s simply strange that we spend so much money on training local doctors and that so many of them are unemployed”
In 1996, South Africa and Cuba signed a bilateral agreement to launch the Nelson Mandela/Fidel Castro Medical Collaboration Program. The agreement seeks to address “the excessive concentration of health personnel in urban areas and the exclusionary private sector, as well as to increase the number of qualified health professionals,” said the then Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, during a parliamentary debate about Cuba.
The Cuba-South Africa relationship has since left controversial episodes, such as the payment of $225,000 during one year to seven Cuban doctors who worked in that country, out of a group of 28 hired in 2020, to help at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic but had already returned to the Island by that time, or the disbursement of $750,000 from South Africa annually for 11 Cuban doctors.
*Translator’s note: Cubans cannot choose their own vocation; they go “where the Revolution needs” them.
Translated by Regina Anavy