HAVANA — Yonelkys García, 44, a housewife and mother of two, finds it so difficult to travel to the hospital to treat her acute myeloid leukemia that she now stays at the facility one week at a time.
García has been in treatment for over a year at the Institute of Hematology and Immunology and is thankful to have access to the hospital — one of the best on the communist-run island — but acknowledges that even there she faces constraints.
“It has been tough in every sense … Sometimes the institute has been out of many medications, and I have had to call my friends and family in other countries to send me my medication,” García said.
As Cuba’s economic crisis deepens and amid the fuel shortages and the blackouts, hospitals have been hard hit, leaving patients in the dark and medicine at risk of spoiling.
Cuba’s government granted NBC News rare access inside the Institute of Hematology and Immunology, a research facility in the capital where they treat difficult cases from across the island that are referred there.
Even at this top hospital, which has more resources than others across the island, doctors and nurses are grappling with the complexities of treating patients under serious constraints.