The ethical imperative of health in Cuba in the face of the energy siege.
Despite this siege, the Cuban health system has not collapsed, responding with a strategic reorganization based on resilience, the strengthening of primary care and the use of tools such as telemedicine...
March 10, 2026, México Herald (El Heraldo de México )
Author: Dr. José Angel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health, Cuba.
Guest Column
In the complex scenario of contemporary geopolitics, economic figures tend to camouflage the real human impact that underlies the decisions of governments to achieve obscure political and economic objectives of domination in their relations with other countries, which on many occasions put lives at risk.
Irrefutable proof of this reality are the tools that the United States Government uses in a desperate and cruel manner against Cuba, and that increasingly increase the risks and threats to the lives of our people.
What has been historically for my country a economic, commercial and financial blockade for more than six decades, has recently mutated towards a qualitatively different phase which is even more quantitatively aggressive and inhumane: energy asphyxiation under false pretences. Cuba suffers a continuation of coercive unilateral measures that have a enormous extraterritorial impact in its relations with all countries and confronts a systemic blockade designed surgically to cause shortages capable of hurt and revert the social development of our nation and the quality of live of our population for destabilizing purposes.
The unjust inclusion of Cuba in the US list of countries alleged sponsors of terrorism, adds to the persecution of commercial contracts of Cuba with countries and firms to obtain fuel; the harassment, interception and confiscation of ships carrying fuel, as well as threats of sanctions -and in other cases their effective application against shipping companies, have generated even greater pressure on our country transcending the economic to place itself in the field of basic human security.
In the health sector, this reality translates into a permanent objective tension: the National Health System depends on a continuous supply of electricity and logistics that are currently severely hampered.
The impact of the U.S. policy of maximum pressure against Cuba is starkly revealed in the most sensitive indicators.
Behind the numbers there are patients who suffer and families who wait for solutions that are sometimes delayed, or do not arrive, due to external factors that are the result of this progressive policy of strangulation of the Cuban economy by the Government of the United States.
Currently, the surgical waiting list in the country reaches the figure of 96,387 patients, of which 11,193 are children. With the current energy restriction, these figures increase by forcing the National Health System to postpone non-urgent surgeries to prioritize oncological and other life-defining surgeries.
Vulnerability is accentuated in programs of high social sensitivity, which have been prioritized, but even so they do not escape the multiplied limitations that the current energy situation of the country brings with it.
For instance, right now the Maternal and Child Care Program faces the challenge of ensuring the follow-up of 32 thousand pregnant women who require fundamental diagnostic ultrasounds. Likewise, the intermittency in refrigerated transport, due to lack of fuel, has made it difficult for more than 30 thousand children to receive their vaccines in a timely manner, despite having the biological vaccines in our warehouses.
In addition, 16,000 patients are being treated in radiotherapy and another 2,888 who depend on hemodialysis treatments, services that demand energy stability that is currently very difficult to guarantee. And yet despite these and other realities faced by the National Health System, its operation is not in a phase of collapse. The answer has not been paralysis but a strategic reorganization based on resilience and the optimization of resources.
Among other actions, it continues to strengthen the resolution in Primary Health Care, strengthening the Family Doctor and Nurse Program, and using tools such as telemedicine to guarantee the vitality of basic services.
And that capacity to respond rests, fundamentally, on the altruism, ethics, commitment and professionalism of Cuban human capital, which does not live isolated from the reality of the country. Our workers and students suffer in their homes the same shortages and long hours without electricity as the rest of the people they serve, and even so they turn the challenges of each day into new motivations to do and continue looking for alternative solutions to the lack of resources that exists in the institutions of the sector.
It is moving how, in provinces where 85% of neonatology specialists reside outside the municipality where they work, extraordinary alternatives are sought to ensure that no newborn is left unprotected in the face of the transport crisis.
The prestige of Cuban medicine has been forged with humanism and a sense of duty, not only within our borders, but also in the 165 nations where Cuban health collaborators provide or have provided services for decades, as is the case of Mexico. Today, that same commitment is what sustains the National Health System even under the growing pressure and the increasing technical wear and tear of its infrastructure.
We feel with pride that Cuba is not alone, thanks to the solidarity we receive from the most diverse corners of the world. Our eternal gratitude to all the sister nations and, especially, to the Mexican people and Government, whose outstretched hand has been a special support for us in such diverse scenarios.
The appeal we have made to the international community is not ideological, but profoundly humanitarian. Public health is a fundamental human right, which should not be conditioned by political disputes or by the use of energy as an instrument of coercion.
When energy is lacking, it is extremely difficult to maintain essential services, and when that happens, it is the people – especially the most vulnerable – who are negatively impacted and pay the risks of the stresses that this implies. Cuba will continue to take all possible measures to protect its population, which is now suffering the consequences of the cruel policy of asphyxiation by the United States as never before.
And in the face of this reality, our request to the international community continues to be to show its solidarity in order to confront the real and objective dimension of a criminal siege that threatens life itself.
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