Cubans are facing food shortages, blackouts and now a dengue outbreak
Burdened by constant blackouts and food shortages, Cubans are now facing a new dengue outbreak in the middle of the hot summer that threatens again to overwhelm the island’s public health system, already reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dengue is a viral disease transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, and the government said the levels of mosquito infestation on the island are the worst in the past 15 years. In a meeting Tuesday, Cuban health authorities said they had confirmed 3,036 cases of dengue so far this year. But most people with symptoms, such as fever, vomiting or a rash, do not get tested, as the health system also lacks testing supplies.
Health Ministry officials acknowledged that just in the first week of July, they had identified 14,256 people with “unspecified fever.” The ministry said that figure represented a 42% increase in suspected dengue cases compared to the previous week.
Official figures, however, might not reveal the true extent of the epidemic, for which government officials are giving differing statistics. According to the Communist Party newspaper Granma, there were 27.91 detected cases per 100,000 inhabitants last week. Speaking of the same week, a health official quoted by state media outlet Cubadebate said the rate was lower, 19.7.
In a government meeting Tuesday, Cuba’s Minister of Health, José Angel Portal Miranda, said there was dengue transmission last week in eight provinces: Pinar del Río, Havana, Matanzas, Villa Clara, Camagüey, Las Tunas, Holguín and Guantánamo.
But videos shared on social media suggest the disease is also present and straining the public health system in other provinces.
Videos circulating during the weekend show the overcrowded emergency room at the children’s hospital in Cienfuegos, a province not mentioned by the minister. In one of the videos, a mother confronts a doctor asking loudly, “when will my daughter be seen?”
“Stop saying there’s nothing (to treat her); I need you to see my daughter,” she shouted. “My daughter had convulsions, and you keep referring her from one place to another. What else do I need to do? I have a mother’s heart!”
There is no specific treatment for dengue, but early detection and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates, the World Health Organization says.
While dengue has been endemic in some areas in Latin America and the Caribbean for many years, it can hit Cuba especially hard because of the lack of air conditioning or window screens in homes, the frequent blackouts and improperly stored water in the many many households with limited access to running water.
Cubans cannot rely on other mitigation measures such as repellents or mosquito netting because they are not readily available.
Years of underfunding and the COVID-19 pandemic have left Cuban hospitals and local clinics poorly prepared to handle a new outbreak. Patients have to provide their own bedsheets; many hospitals lack running water, and healthcare workers lack basic supplies like gloves and catheters to treat patients.
This year, more than 140 medicines have been in short supply, almost 40% of the most common medications that should be available in pharmacies, said Tania Urquiza, the vicepresident of Bio-Cuba Pharma, a state pharmaceutical company. Urquiza blamed the U.S. embargo, but acknowledged that the government prioritized funding for developing the domestic COVID vaccines.
With daily electricity cuts lasting several hours, it is harder for Cubans to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Cuban officials recently said the situation does not have a short-term solution because the country has a power-generation deficit, since several plants are out of commission for maintenance or in need of repair.