cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/47186797

May 11, 2026 [shareable 30-day gift article]

By Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan L. Jackson

Ms. Jayapal, of Washington’s Seventh Congressional District, and Mr. Jackson, of Illinois’s First Congressional District, are Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Alejandro, a premature baby born in Havana’s Eusebio Hernández Pérez maternity hospital, weighed only two pounds when we met him in April. We watched him as he lay in an incubator, one of the few in the building whose delicate electronic components hadn’t been damaged by the high-voltage electricity surges that follow nationwide blackouts. Far-reaching U.S. sanctions make importing replacement parts for the other, broken incubators nearly impossible.

Touring the hospital, we saw women in the final days of their pregnancies trudging up flights of stairs, the elevators inoperable without power. The hospital staff members struggle to get to work without fuel for their cars. During blackouts, doctors sometimes have to manually pump ventilators to keep babies alive. They say the hospital has managed to avoid an increase in infant mortality over the past several months, but other facilities around the country have not been so lucky. From 2018 to 2025, as U.S. sanctions grew more punitive, Cuba’s once-impressive infant mortality rate skyrocketed by 148 percent.