The ordeal of kidney patients in Cuba: ‘If you want your daughter to live, you have to get her out of the country’

It’s as if a snake has crept into Ayamey Valdés’s arm… an 11-inch-long snake, thick, deformed and violent. Oftentimes, it seems that she has volcanoes erupting on her skin. They spit blood until she’s left without strength, with her skin dyed a cyanotic blue. That’s when the arteriovenous fistula in her arm bursts: it swells, oozes and hurts.

