Latest news with #JessicaRodriguez
Malay Mail
5 days ago
- Health
- Malay Mail
Cuba's drug crisis: Families scour black market as pharmacies run dry, children's lives hang in the balance
HAVANA, July 10 — 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 US$12 (RM51). 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. 'It drives me crazy,' the 27-year-old told AFP at her home in Havana's Santa Fe neighbourhood as her son Luis Angelo watched a cartoon on her mobile. 'Missing a dose, not having the suction tubes, a catheter that cannot be replaced... all can lead to serious illnesses which can cost him his life.' Jessica Rodriguez Romero prepares medicines to administer with a syringe directly into the stomach of her son, Luis Angelo, due to his tracheostomy, at their home in the Santa Fe neighbourhood of Havana July 2, 2025. — AFP pic Luis Angelo was born with a deformed oesophagus, and while he waits to receive a transplant, breathes through a tracheostomy and eats through a tube inserted into his stomach. He is also asthmatic, has a heart condition, and suffers epileptic fits. The boy takes seven different drugs daily, and needs a variety of tubes, syringes and other equipment to administer them. Cuba, reputed for supplying highly trained medical doctors to other countries and for its advanced domestic pharmaceutical industry, has long counted vaccines and medical services among its top exports. Under US sanctions since 1962, and hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic that all but tanked its tourism industry, the communist country is now no longer medically self-sufficient. Last year, the island nation of 9.7 million people could not afford the US$300 million (RM1.28 billion) needed to import the raw materials it required to produce hundreds of critical medicines. 'There's nothing' In Havana, and further afield, pharmacy shelves are bare and hospitals lack basic supplies such as gauze, suturing thread, disinfectant and oxygen. 'There are days when there's nothing,' a doctor in the capital told AFP on condition of anonymity. Cuba's healthcare system is public and meant to be universally accessible. Private pharmacies, clinics and hospitals are illegal. Patients who require chronic medicine are issued with a document known as a 'tarjeton,' which allows them access to subsidised medicines. Luis Angelo has a 'tarjeton,' but it is of little use if pharmacies don't have the drugs, said his mum. On the black market, she is forced to pay US$3 to US$4 for a blister sheet of pills — about a quarter of the average monthly Cuban salary at the unofficial exchange rate. 'The price is cruel,' Rodriguez told AFP. 'Ray of hope' Confronted with the ever-worsening medicine shortage, the government has since 2021 allowed travellers to bring back food and medicines in their luggage — though not for resale. Some of these drugs are feeding a black market that profits from the desperately infirm with sales via WhatsApp or internet sites. Other sites, however, offer drugs for free or barter them for food. In the NGO sphere, projects have also emerged to provide medicines to Cubans free of charge. One, dubbed Palomas, has helped tens of thousands of people since its creation in Havana in 2021. It relies on medicines that people have 'left over from a treatment, or were brought by someone from abroad,' coordinator Sergio Cabrera told AFP. Sergio Cabrera, coordinator of the humanitarian project Palomas, shows the list of free medicines available as a result of donations and exchanges among users of his WhatsApp group, in Havana April 28, 2025. — AFP pic Every day, in 13 WhatsApp groups, Palomas publishes a list of medicines it has available, and another list of those it needs. One beneficiary was 32-year-old dentist Ibis Montalban, who said she managed to get her mother's chronic diabetes medication through Palomas, adding: 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Cabrera says it is hard to witness the suffering of people in need. 'Many people cry here, and many times we cry with them,' he said, grateful that Palomas can at least offer 'a ray of hope.' — AFP
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Whale watching tour off Newport Beach gets rare visit from ‘phantoms' of the Pacific
A whale-watching excursion off the coast of Orange County got an up-and-close visit by a pair of friendly and 'extremely curious' minke whales. The encounter happened Tuesday morning between the whales and a Davey's Locker Whale Watching tour just miles off the Newport Beach coastline. Video shared with KTLA showed the normally shy and flighty marine mammals approach the packed boat, circling it several times and surfacing several feet away. According to Jessica Rodriguez, the Education & Communications Manager at Davey's Locker Whale Watching, encounters like this are exceedingly rare. 'Typically shy and swift, Minke whales are often known as the 'phantoms' of the Pacific due to their brief surface time and quick movements,' Rodriguez said. 'This encounter was a heartwarming reminder of the deep connection that can occur between humans and marine life when we take the time to observe, respect, and protect our ocean environment.' Among the passengers to be treated to the rare display of interspecies diplomacy, was a group of students from the local Monte Vista Elementary School. For more information about tours like this, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
Miami Herald
23-03-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
‘Gentle giant' rarely seen in Southern California waters stuns boaters. See video
A whale-watching tour off Southern California got a close-up look at a passing basking shark, which are rarely seen in warmer waters, a video shows. A Davey's Locker Whale Watching boat spotted the shark about 3 miles offshore between the Balboa and Newport Landing piers on Friday, March 21, an Instagram post said. 'Crossing paths with a basking shark in Southern California is very rare, but a couple have been reported by boats near Long Beach and San Diego recently,' the post said. 'We are overjoyed to have seen this special shark today.' 'Oh my gosh, he's filter-feeding!' someone says on the video. 'This is absolutely nuts, you guys,' the person says in footage obtained by KTLA. The crew initially mistook the shark for an elephant seal, KTLA reported. 'Basking sharks are the second largest sharks in the world, measuring up to 30 feet as adults, about as long as a school bus,' according to the National Marine Sanctuaries website. 'Like whale sharks and unlike white sharks, these gentle giants filter feed on dense clumps of copepods, tiny crustaceans about the size of a grain of rice,' the agency said. Sometimes mistaken for predatory sharks, basking sharks spend most of their time feeding near the surface, Oceana said. They are '/considered vulnerable to extinction.' 'These gentle giants are typically found in cooler waters, and are rarely spotted in waters off California, raising curiosity about why they were off the coast today in Newport Beach,' Jessica Rodriguez with Davey's Locker Whale Watching told KTLA.
