U.S. blockade hinders cardiology services in Eastern Cuba

The Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery Center of the city of Santiago de Cuba provides care to a population of more than four million people while trying to maintain the excellence of its services despite the difficulties imposed on the national health care system by the U.S. blockade.

With 37 years of work to its credit as leader of the field in the eastern provinces, the Center takes care of adults with various congenital and acquired heart diseases, but the systematic provision of these services has suffered the impact of the said genocidal U.S. Cuba policy, which also tampers with the surgical branch, lacking in indispensable equipment such as oxygenators, prosthetic and vascular valves, and ventilation and extracorporeal circulation machines are indispensable in surgery, and extending their useful life is a challenge due to the obstacles imposed for their periodic renewal.

Justo Moisés Peña, a member of the management team, pointed out that the Center has to reuse many of the resources employed in surgery due to the malicious U.S. economic siege and recalled the difficult moments during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the list of patients waiting for a pacemaker grew longer as the foreign companies stopped selling them to Cuba because of the U.S. sanctions and the doctors had to rely on alternative solutions to keep them alive until more than a hundred of these devices arrived in the country in the late 2023.

Héctor Mustelier, head of the International Relations Department of the provincial Health Division, remarked that international solidarity ratifies the global community's opposition to the blockade and keeps the service going through the provision of medical donations that save lives.

The most recent example is the campaign With a hand to the heart, promoted by the MediCuba-Europe network of Associations and Non-Governmental Development Organizations and the U.S. Solidarity Group Global Health Partners, which raise funds to buy pacemakers and send them to Cuba along with equipment worth more than US$800 apiece, an undeniable example of support and humanism.

As it provides cares to patients from the provinces of Las Tunas, Holguín, Granma and Guantánamo, this Center overcomes the obstacles with special success in coronary interventions and the guarantee of a 95% survival rate.