“They want to take away our surgical activity,” complains a doctor at La Balear Hospital in San Miguel del Padrón.
14ymedio, Madrid, 8 July 2025 — The rampant crisis affecting Cuban healthcare is about to wipe out the surgical department at La Balear Pediatric Hospital in San Miguel del Padrón, Havana. According to 14ymedio’s sources, provincial health authorities have ordered the dismantling of the medical center’s surgical department, which serves patients from the municipality itself, as well as those from Regla, Guanabacoa, and Cotorro, and transfer them to other hospitals.
“They want to take away our surgical activity at our hospital and transfer the few resources we have in our warehouse to another hospital,” a doctor at the center, who requested anonymity, told this newspaper. “I know that at both Havana’s flagship pediatric hospital, William Soler, and at Juan Manuel Marqués Hospital, elective surgical activity has diminished due to a lack of material resources and a lack of (anesthesiologist) personnel. But our hospital, despite being small, has maintained surgical activity.
The specialist explains that La Balear currently performs general, orthopedic, ear, and urological surgeries and also has the only functional CT scanner for pediatrics in Havana. “They’re dismantling our hospital until nothing is left. This order comes from the provincial hospital administration, which doesn’t care at all about our hospital, its staff, or the child population, who will be deprived of the surgical services we provide.”
The doctor states that the problems are not only in the surgical side, but reach the clinical side, and, in addition, extend to other hospitals.
The doctor states that the problems are not only in the surgical side, but reach the clinical side, and, in addition, extend to other hospitals. “The problem is widespread, and has been going on for at least three months. The doctors at William Soler Hospital told me that elective surgeries were limited due to a lack of supplies,” he points out.
Among the scarce materials he cites are everything from gauze to suture threads, trocars, pre-anesthetic and anesthetic medications, endotracheal tubes, and suction catheters. The worst part, however, is the lack of anesthesiologists. “That’s why there’s no general surgery on call at the Centro Habana Pediatric Hospital, because they don’t have a full team of anesthesiologists,” he says.
The health official complains that provincial health officials have been suggesting for some time that services need to be reorganized due to staffing shortages. The most affected positions in pediatrics are those of anesthesiologist, neonatologist, general surgeon, pediatric intensive care specialist, clinical neurology, dermatology, and cardiology, among others.
“For now, my hospital has told us that this week is the last week for operations due to a lack of medical supplies and the resources to purchase them. Where will these few resources we have in our warehouse go? They’ll go to the children’s hospitals that have medical-surgical on-call staff — William Soler and Juan Manuel Marquéz — but I assure you, the longest that will last one of these two hospitals, at best, will be a month.”
These hospitals are larger, along with the one in Centro Habana, which is also expected to be maintained, according to the interviewee. La Balear is part of what authorities consider “peripheral” centers, those condemned to be closed to concentrate resources. In 2023, 14ymedio published a story reporting the mass desertion of pediatricians at the El Cerro hospital.
Currently, there are 24,000 professionals in the sector on “international missions,” a very high number to the detriment of the National Health System
“As Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said, ‘a war economy’,” the doctor quips. This concept of a country under siege is the same one used by President Miguel Díaz-Canel last Saturday at the conclusion of the Communist Party Central Committee meeting, when he said that the island “has been living and resisting for more than 60 years under wartime conditions.” However, this hasn’t stopped the government from exporting healthcare personnel while simultaneously suffering a lack of them within the country. Currently, there are 24,000 healthcare professionals on “international missions,” a very high number to the detriment of the National Health System, although far fewer than the 30,000 who were abroad in other times.
The decline in healthcare professionals on the island is due to a combination of factors, among which miserable salaries is one of the main reasons. A junior doctor in Cuba can earn around 4,610 Cuban pesos per month, while a specialist earns around 5,560 pesos or up to 7,500 pesos if they have about 20 years of experience. Although the government approved a salary increase through supplements in 2024 to try to encourage professionals to stay in their jobs, some jobs in the private sector, which are much less demanding in terms of education, time, and commitment, are paid the same or more.
According to the latest Statistical Yearbook on Health and Social Assistance, Cuba lost 12,065 doctors, 3,246 dentists, and 7,414 nurses in one year , going from a total of 312,406 employees as medical staff in 2021 to 281,098 in 2022, a loss of 31,308.
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