Bitter Pill for Cubans

HEALTH CRISIS: COUNTRY RUNS LOW ON LIFE-SAVING MEDICINES

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Cuban Jessica Rodriguez never knows if she will find the medicines that keep her four-year-old son alive in a country that has all but run out of essential drugs. On a near daily basis, she sprints from one state-run pharmacy to another on a quest for pills and syringes. Increasingly, she has to turn to the black market and pay the higher prices there. That is if they have what she needs.

Rodriguez, who left her job as a physiotherapist to care for her sickly son, receives a monthly state grant of less than $12 (about R214). Her husband's salary is not much more.

And as Cuba sinks ever deeper into its worst economic crisis in decades – with critical shortages also of food and fuel, regular power blackouts and rampant inflation – Rodriguez fears that one day the drugs may run out altogether.