Relatives of Cuban woman who committed suicide in Havana condemn medical negligence

Relatives of a young Cuban woman who committed suicide by jumping from the eighth floor of Havana’s Miguel Enriquez Hospital have condemned medical negligence in the care of the patient, who was reportedly being treated with alternative medicine.

Gisele Villafranco, 24, died on January 24 After jumping from the eighth floor of the old Benfica in the municipality of Luano.

in statements to Marty News The victim’s stepfather, José Francisco Santana Cruz, said that the medical care he received and the system that rules Cuba are responsible for this fact.

They claim the young woman was suffering from uncontrolled schizophrenia and the medication she was given was not suitable to treat the condition amid a drug shortage on the island.

According to him, this medicine kept him unconscious without improving his disease. He declared, “My daughter had uncontrolled schizophrenia and the medication they were giving her was not for that illness, the medication kept her unconscious, but she didn’t get out of that step.”

In response to these allegations, Dr. Judith Díaz Linares, part of the medical team at the psychiatric ward where Gisele was hospitalized on five occasions, denied the allegations of having drugged Martí Noticias. However, it did not provide additional details, other than stating that patient information is not disclosed over the phone.

Faced with this tragedy, the Villafranco family considered taking legal action to condemn what they saw as medical negligence, but they assured that complaints in this regard would not be entertained.

The stepfather said, “We would like to go to the State Council to complain, but I assure you it would be futile. Nothing is solved here.”

On the other hand, Lazaro Villafranco, the father of the deceased, blames the shortcomings of the political and social system in Cuba for this situation.

The man criticized the lack of medical care, the lack of medicines, the poor hygiene of hospitals.

“There is no good medical care here, there is no medicine here, there is no cleanliness in the hospitals here, the culprit is the system, everything is the system,” he said.

“Because if there’s no medical care, and the doctor who’s going to treat you doesn’t know when he’s going to get home, whether you’re going to eat or not, that doctor is going to be able to get you to eat with his head held high.” Can’t get medical attention as it is,” he said.

Furthermore, he condemned the delay of the forensic medicine staff in lifting his daughter’s body from the hospital roof. He told that the girl died at 6 pm and the body was picked up after 11 pm.

Gisele Villafranca Llerena was a nurse by profession, mother of a 3-year-old girl and lived in San Francisco de Paula in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón.

In mid-2023, the Cuban government ranked suicide as the tenth cause of death among Cubans in 2022, although the MINASAP report did not make public the figures for euphemistically “intentionally inflicted self-inflicted injuries”.