HAVANA — Dr. Olivia Blanco no longer drives to work. The oncologist leaves her car parked at home in Havana more than two hours before her shift. She walks and tries to flag down a passing car to give her a ride.

Cuba’s energy crisis has made life more difficult for patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers at a hospital in Havana that the state named after a late surgeon who was a guerrilla fighter.

“When I don’t have personal transportation, my response time is a problem, and it’s a practical problem in terms of whether I can meet the needs of patients,” Blanco told Chinese state media CCTV in Spanish at the Hospital Universitario Clínico Quirúrgico Comandante Manuel Fajardo in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood.

President Donald Trump and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel have both agreed that the island’s situation needs to change. Both have acknowledged U.S.-Cuba talks, but they have deep ideological disagreements.

After capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is in prison in New York facing narco-terrorism charges, Trump cut the flow of Venezuelan oil to Cuba in January and made deals with Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president and a United Socialist Party of Venezuela leader.

While a U.S.-Cuba deal is uncertain, Maria del Toledo, a caretaker, said she had to travel for hours to the hospital with her sick relative, who suffered the tedious, long journey in pain and on an empty stomach.

Dr. Mirtha Miranda Ley, the hospital’s director, said the transportation challenges have worsened in recent weeks and these impact access to essential supplies.

Unstable blood bank supplies are affecting Joaquin Gonzalez, a patient at the hospital.

“I’m hospitalized because I suffer from internal gastrointestinal bleeding, and I lose a lot of blood, so right now, because of the current situation, everything is difficult ... transfusions are sometimes quite challenging,” Gonzalez told CCTV in Spanish.

The hospital staff has a grueling rotating schedule of 24 hours on duty followed by 48 hours off. The Chinese and Cuban governments announced work on solar energy options to deal with power outages.

Matilde Visoso, a single mother caring for a sick daughter, told the Associated Press that Cubans are waiting for Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to take action.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Visoso, 64, said. “It’s too much — there is a lot of repression, there is a lot of hunger. Cuba is in tears.”

More from Cuba

• Maritime intelligence companies track 2 ships with Russian cargo heading to Cuba: Financial Times
• Cuba’s leader says US aggression would meet ‘impregnable resistance’
• Islandwide blackout hits Cuba as it struggles with deepening energy crisis

• Cuban Americans in Miami’s Little Havana ask communists to free island
• Trump, Rubio call for new Cuban leaders as latest blackout underscores deepening economic crisis

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