William Pérez, doctor sentenced to prison in Bayamo, speaks about the trial.

The Cuban doctor William Pérez Ramírez, one of the five health workers who was sentenced to house arrest in Bayamo for medical negligence in the case of the death of a 23-year-old young man, broke the silence and spoke about the rigged trial that the Castro regime prepared.

“I am being sentenced and blamed for reckless homicide, because I had to change, when I saw the patient, the criteria that the specialist had already taken,” he denounced in a video spread through social networks by the communicator Ernesto Morales.

Pérez Ramírez, sentenced to one year of house arrest, says he feels “extreme dissatisfaction” because the communist regime does not protect doctors. “My dissatisfaction is extreme, extreme, at all times I have felt unprotected during this process. I believe that in this country, doctors are very unprotected,” he declared in his brief intervention.

The trial against the doctors of Bayamo, which came about nearly two years after the death of the citizen who came to the hospital after suffering a serious motorcycle accident, has caused indignation in both the medical community and the general public.

Most highlight the difficult situation in which doctors in Cuba work, many of whom opt for alternative jobs due to the harsh conditions and low salaries in the health sector.

The convicted doctors faced the difficult decision to treat the patient with limited resources, a choice in line with the Hippocratic Oath but considered imprudent by the judicial system. During the trial, no expert opinions were presented to properly analyze the situation and the procedures followed.

Alexander Jesús Figueredo Izaguirre, an exiled Cuban doctor, commented that this trial shows that doctors in Cuba are forced to collaborate with a dictatorship, working for miserable wages and risking being imprisoned. Figueredo Izaguirre, who has denounced injustices in Cuba, expressed his desire for everyone to enjoy the freedom he has found in exile.

This case highlights the crisis in the Cuban healthcare system and the complex ethical decisions that doctors face under an authoritarian regime and under precarious working conditions.