The center is sinking into filth and services are closed while an unbearable stench spreads throughout the building

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 19 January 2025 — “There is no water,” warns a sign in the cafeteria of the Camilo Cienfuegos Provincial Hospital in Sancti Spíritus. The sign, which hangs at an angle from a blackboard, adds that only “products to take away” are being sold, and its presence is just a small sample of what is happening inside the medical center. Several operating rooms remain closed, specialist consultations are limited and the bathrooms are covered in excrement.
“We can’t even clean the floor because the water hasn’t come on for days,” an employee who works in the emergency room told 14ymedio. “This has affected everything, from the emergency services to the laboratory where the tests are done and the hemodialysis room, which is one of the rooms that has the most problems right now because there are patients in a very delicate state.” The worker believes that in these conditions “the hospital becomes a high-risk place for the sick.”

In the Emergency Room, the smells coming from the bathrooms fill the waiting room. The doctors and nurses seem to have gotten used to the stench after days of it being present, but the patients who have just arrived feel it like a punch in the face. “I came with my husband who is having an asthma attack and as soon as we entered we were stunned. How can a health center be like this?” After waiting for half an hour, the couple decided to return home. “We’ll see how we resolve it, but this is unbearable.”
The hospital, which was recently the target of criticism for the lack of medical personnel at night, has been defended in the official press as a place that “despite the energy contingency” works 24 hours a day and provides excellent service. Last October, a photo report published in the local Escambray newspaper showed surgeons in an impeccable room performing a complex operation, maintenance technicians analyzing samples and a nephrology specialist calibrating modern dialysis equipment. If these images were repeated now, they would not be able to capture the main protagonist of these rooms and consultations: the stench that the lack of water has spread everywhere.
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