cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/47993690

May 27, 2026
[very powerful, beautifully written account by a Cuban doctor.]

By an Anonymous Cuban Surgeon

This article was originally published by CounterPunch.

I am a surgeon in Havana, Cuba.

Last month, I operated on an elderly man with a perforated peptic ulcer. The surgery was textbook. I closed his abdomen cleanly, without complication. We had antibiotics available that time. What we did not have was intravenous crystalloid fluid for resuscitation. It’s the most basic of solutions, cheap enough to cost almost nothing, yet essential enough to save almost everything. It exists. It is manufactured in Santiago de Cuba, 500 miles away. It could not reach Havana since there was no petroleum to transport it. By the time it arrived, my patient had died.