Dayana Rodriguez said her son is overwhelmed with scabies, but she has not been able to find any of the treatments prescribed by their doctor at the poorly stocked pharmacies in Havana, so she is now turning to a herbal remedy instead.
Even as Cuba is leading the race to become the first country in Latin America to develop its own COVID-19 vaccine, it is suffering acute shortages of basic medicines amid its worst economic crisis in decades.
“There aren’t any of the ones they prescribed him, Benzyl benzoate, or the other one for itching too that used to be in all the pharmacies,” Rodriguez said, buying medicinal plants at a shop on a commercial boulevard in the city.
Photo: Reuters
Nine families in Havana said that they were struggling to treat outbreaks of scabies, a highly infectious yet preventable skin disease, due to medicine shortages.
Three doctors consulted by Reuters who declined to be named said they had resorted to advising their patients to boil up a mix of herbs to apply to their skin to provide temporary relief for scabies, as it was futile to prescribe medicines that are scarce.
One of those doctors also recommended a veterinary treatment for one of his patients.
Cuba’s healthcare system, built by former Cuban president Fidel Castro, is one of the revolution’s most treasured achievements, having produced results on a par with rich nations using the resources of a developing country and in spite of the decades-old US trade embargo.
However, cash woes in the ailing state economy since the fall of former benefactor the Soviet Union have taken their toll on healthcare facilities and the availability of medicine.
Over the past few years, the decline in aid from ally Venezuela, new US sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic have plunged Cuba into its worst economic crisis since the 1990s.
Cuban Minister of Health Jose Portal last year reported on state television that as of June about 116 basic medicines were scarce. Of those, 87 were produced locally and 29 imported.
Cubans have set up groups on social media to barter medicines or other products for those they need, while the black market is thriving on the streets and online.
Some senior citizens like Yolanda Perez, 80, who has glaucoma, said they do not have the stamina needed to line up at pharmacies overnight in the hope of grabbing their share of scant deliveries.
“It’s been six months since I was last able to get my latanoprost,” the drug that helps prevent her from going blind, she said.
Authorities in the eastern province of Holguin in January told Cubans not to turn to the black market, because some drugs were not what they advertised and could even be harmful.
“The problem is people are despairing over the lack of medicine,” wrote a reader identified as Arcela under an article on the topic in state outlet Juventud Rebelde.
She said her sister had had to buy black market antibiotics.
“That’s why they resort to these methods,” she wrote.
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