THE NEW YORK TIMES: Cuban health care was once the pride of the island. Now the U.S. oil blockade is upending even basic medical care.
As a nationwide blackout in Cuba stretched into a second day this past weekend, the stakes were rising for Jorge Pérez Álvarez.
The 21-year-old suffers from a genetic disease preventing his lungs from pumping air on their own. He needs a ventilator at all times to keep breathing.
His ventilator’s backup battery is supposed to last more than a day, but that has been tested repeatedly in recent weeks, including three nationwide outages that each pushed up against its limits. And with the power out for hours every day, there is hardly enough time to recharge it.
“I don’t know how long we can keep going,” said his mother, Xenia Álvarez, standing near her son’s crumpled body in his bedroom in a poor neighborhood of Havana. “His life depends on electricity.”
The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba is fast exhausting the country’s supply of fuel, causing daily blackouts, food shortages, canceled classes and black-market gas prices approaching $40 a gallon. It is also crippling Cuba’s universal health care system, a state institution once considered a triumph for a poor nation, but is now struggling to provide basic care.
In interviews, six Cuban doctors said that rapidly deteriorating conditions at hospitals and clinics across Cuba were causing deaths that would otherwise be preventable.
“I can’t tell you how many deaths, but I’m sure there are more than in the same period last year,” said Dr. Alioth Fernandez, chief anesthesiologist at Havana’s largest pediatric hospital. “I see it in shift handovers, in colleagues’ comments and in children I’ve operated on.”
The blockade’s effects are cascading through the system. Hospitals are canceling surgeries and sending patients home because doctors and nurses can’t commute to work. Clinics are struggling to administer treatments like chemotherapy and dialysis because of power outages. » | By Ed Augustin and Jack Nicas | Photographs by Jorge Luis Baños | Ed Augustin and Jorge Luis Baños reported from Havana. | Thursday, March 26, 2026
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