HAVANA: Twenty-six patients at Cuba’s largest hospital for the mentally ill died this week during a cold snap. Human rights leaders cited negligence and a lack of resources as factors in the deaths, and the Health Ministry launched an investigation that it said could lead to criminal proceedings. A Health Ministry communique read on state television blamed “prolonged low temperatures that fell to 4 degrees Celsius in Boyeros,”

the neighbourhood where Havana’s Psychiatric Hospital is located. It

said most of the deaths were from natural causes.