Havana/“Between the chemical and chikungunya here you can’t go out on the street anymore,” summarizes Gladys, a retiree living in the municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, Havana. In the house of this 71-year-old Havana resident, everyone is infected with one of the arbovirus that already circulate widely in the Cuban capital. “First my husband fell into bed, then my daughter, then my two grandchildren and now I started with the fever.”
With severe joint pain, the woman describes herself as “unable to walk.” Housework also becomes more difficult with the discomfort and physical weakness that overcomes her: “I can’t even peel a garlic,” she warns. 14ymedio. When her husband began showing symptoms and then the grandchildren followed, the family sought help at the local polyclinic, but the lack of reagents and the avalanche of patients with similar febrile states overwhelmed the medical center.
“They told them they should rest, stay under the mosquito net and drink plenty of fluids, but they didn’t know what it was.” After that consultation, the other infected people decided “not to go to the polyclinic, why?” questions Gladys. The symptoms, however, coincide with chikungunya although “it could also be dengue because there are cases in this area.” With previous arthritis problems, the woman fears that the joint pain could last longer in her case.
Chikungunya arthritis can become a chronic symptom
Chikungunya arthritis can become a chronic symptom. Although joint discomfort is usually temporary, in some patients it is prolonged and often requires treatment with anti-inflammatories, physiotherapy, steroids or antirheumatic medications, according to research published by the Spanish magazine Clinical Rheumatology.
But dengue and chikungunya are not the only viruses that keep homes in Havana in suspense. At the Vladimir Ilich Lenin Vocational Pre-University Institute of Exact Sciences (Ipvce) in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, the increase in hepatitis A infections worries parents. “I had to go look for my daughter because she started to feel bad, she couldn’t get out of bed and it turns out she has hepatitis A,” Sarahí, 38, who was once also a student at that school, tells this newspaper.
“In her shelter they had problems with water and they had to carry it from the floors below for weeks,” the woman details. “It seems that in one of those they were infected because at least two more girls from the same classroom also have symptoms.” The cause may also be in “the bathroom, which has almost no way to flush it or wash your hands after using it.”
The cause may also be in “the bathroom, which has almost no way to flush it or wash your hands after using it.”
Hepatitis A – of whose presence, at least in Las Tunas, the official warned this Tuesday Newspaper 26– It is spread primarily through the fecal-oral route, when a person eats food or consumes water that is contaminated with feces from an infected individual. A transmission route that Sarahí sees as very probable in the case of her daughter. “She took almost all the food she was going to consume from the house but we couldn’t carry water every day for her to bathe and drink.”
From the Ipvce where Sarahí attended high school, at the end of the last century, to the current school there are many differences in terms of conditions. “It was already a bit run down when I entered 10th grade, but it was still a privileged place compared to other scholarships,” he recalls. Given the current health status of the school, an idea has begun to gain strength in the mother’s mind: “that the girl should not return to that place again, if she loses the year she will lose it, but what she cannot do is lose her health.”
The impact on services is also beginning to be felt. Amaury, 44, went last Monday to the Harris Brothers Shopping Center in Old Havana to top up his Classic card with a few dollars. “After standing in line before they opened, when it was time to open, an employee came out and said that they couldn’t provide that service because the three employees who know how to do that type of operation are sick with the viruses that are out there.” The man had to go to the Manzana Kempinski hotel to be able to deposit the cash.
While the presence of arboviruses and other diseases due to lack of sanitation grows, the Government continues with its “hygiene” campaign, without recognizing that They do not have enough reagents to determine what disease afflicts the patient who arrives at a health center.
While the presence of arboviruses and other diseases due to lack of sanitation grows, the Government continues with its “hygiene” campaign
Last week, the Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, tried to reassure the inhabitants of Matanzas – where the epidemic is hitting hardest and where the first warning voices to the independent press -, saying that the dengue and chikungunya diseases circulating in the province “are neither new, nor rare, nor unknown”, while strongly denying that there had been deaths from these causes.
His words, however, have been refuted by numerous testimonies who credit deaths in their families.
On the other hand, this Tuesday the official press reproduced an article in which the political analyst of Reasons for Cuba Arthur González suggests that the epidemiological situation is not “casual” and is part of the “biological war” against Cuba, behind which the United States is.
The author points out that chikungunya had not been in Cuba since the 2015 epidemic, but this July, ten years later, the first outbreak was detected in Matanzas, “where Varadero beach is located, one of the most important sun and beach tourist destinations in the country, with the highest number of visitors as it is considered among the best beaches in the world according to international institutions, with excellent hotels managed by prestigious international chains.”
