14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 15 October 2024 — Studying in order to leave the country and leaving the country in order to survive is a theme often discussed among students at the Cienfuegos School of Medical Sciences. Faced with widespread shortages, few reliable ways to get around and hunger, students make huge sacrifices to attend daily classes that will guarantee them a place in some future overseas medical “mission.” If they had other options, they would not be here.
“Getting into this field was complicated because my parents worked for the state, had no money and had no friends with connections,” says Dayana, a first-year medical student. “I am using the same backpack I used in high school. I spend up to three hours a day, every day, hitching rides to class but this is what I have to do to guarantee my future.”
Dayana lives in Rodas, one of the communities that border Cienfuegos, the provincial capital. She says that conditions in which on-campus students must live have dissuaded her from rooming in the dorms. Nevertheless, her class schedule has forced her to experience, at least somewhat, the realities of campus life. “The food at the school is awful. For lunch they give you some badly cooked soup with rice and occasionally a hard-boiled egg. To be honest, I’d rather commute every day from Rodas than live in a dorm without basic amenities.”
Dayana’s decision was influenced by the experiences of her friend Indira, a third-year student who does live in a dorm. “Hygiene is an ongoing issue at this school even though they are supposed to be training doctors,” she says.
What particularly bothers Indira is the training. “My classmates and I have been affected by any number of disruptions that have limited how much we can learn. They range from a teacher shortage and outdated medical literature to inadequate practical experience and primitive healthcare facilities. What we are taught is actually a bit outdated. Most people have to learn things on their own or through a relative who is a doctor,” she confesses.
Worst of all, as she has warned Dayana many times, are the hospital internships. “The first big challenge is that most patients and their families don’t believe we can care for them properly. Then there’s the lack of specialists to guide us through the training process. The other thing, which everyone knows about, is the shortage of supplies. We don’t even have syringes to learn how to draw blood,” she complains.
Freddy, Indira’s boyfriend and a fifth-year medical student, has already become cynical. He has seen half his classmates leave in the last six years. Some because they realized they were wasting time “burning the midnight oil” only to become poorly paid professionals; others because they decided to leave the country. “There are those who study just to join a medical mission and emigrate. Others continue their studies because they want to get a degree but not work for Public Health because they plan to use their degrees elsewhere,” he explains.
He points out that things are just as bad for foreign students. One of Freddy’s classmates, a young woman from Namibia, had been renting an apartment in the Juanita neighborhood with a friend for over six years. “It had no water. Everything was dirty and dark. It was impossible to go on like that,” she says. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m in the right place. When I left my country I had high expectations but now I understand the old saying, ’You get what you pay for.’”
“I thought things would be different because Cuba is famous for its health care system. But, when got here, we found a school with unpainted walls, classrooms in poor condition, teachers with no desire to teach, textbooks that are over 30 years old and used, laboratories with old, broken equipment and cafeterias without food,” she says. “I can understand why Cubans drop out of school. Like them, I came to study, not to starve.”
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