Holguin/“The one who plays loses,” Joel repeats, while explaining his discomfort for having bought only a permethrin tube, just before the bedpore pest that whips the city of Holguín, the medication disappears in the black market. “That same night I felt the first chopped and since then I can not sleep a complete morning.”
“It was my wife who warned me that they were bed bugs,” he tells 14ymedio The Holguinero, 49. “I thought they were mosquitoes, but she lit the light and showed me the sewing of the mattress that was full of bugs.” It was a matter of days, or hours, that insects arrived at Joel’s house and his family. “We had heard the neighbors say they had the houses Scattered And we even saw some throwing the mattresses. ”
“We have extreme hygienic measures because our child is autistic and also suffers several strong allergies.”
Despite the story they listened, Joel and his wife thought they would not be achieved by the epidemic. “We have extreme hygienic measures because our child is autistic and also suffers several strong allergies,” he details this newspaper. “That’s why we live cleaning, washing, boiling the bedding and shaking the furniture.” However, the plague jumped all those “security rings,” he acknowledges.
The bug, an insect that feeds on the blood of humans and other animals, has become an undesirable visitor in many Cuban homes, where overcrowding, lack of cleaning products and poverty have multiplied their appearances in recent years. The outbreaks in provinces such as Santiago de Cuba, Sancti spíritus and Havana have become frequent news in the independent media of the island.
“In no state pharmacy there is anything to deal with this, you have to go to the black market or some particular sale position”
One of the main problems faced by those affected by the arrival of annoying insects is the lack of products to repel infestation. “In no state pharmacy there is anything to deal with this, you have to go to the black market or some particular sale position that, although they are not authorized to sell medicines, they can have this type of products.”
Although the bug is a common insect in tropical areas, its extension by Cuban homes has coincided with the economic crisis, the loss of purchasing power of many families that can no longer maintain hygiene as before and the collapse of the public health system that influences the fall in the offer of pharmaceutical products.
Now, also in the main private sales fairs of the city and in the framework of informal offers permethrin “has been lost,” says Joel on the insecticide, caressing formula, in addition to repellent of insects and lice. “I came back to buy more and they already told me that it had been exhausted and that the clients did not stop arriving asking for the same.”
They took the matt
Not to keep the arms crossed while the medicine reappears, Joel and his wife took out the mattress into the patio “to give the sun all morning to see if the bugs leave.” But the experience of some nearby neighbors does not offer them much hope. “In this neighborhood there are people who have had to burn the sofa, throw the mattress or get rid of the pillows, nothing is saved.”
Despair is also dangerous. Last March, the burning of a mattress ended up causing A fire that affected the residents of the Villanueva and Customs delivery. The flames extended from a garbage dump to the shore and on the waters of the Miradero River, contaminated by the fuel poured by a nearby factory. Shortly after it was learned that it was a mattress with a guada attacked by the bed bugs.
“The one who plays loses”
Holguineros with more luck may appeal to their relatives abroad buy commercial portals that offer food and medicines for delivery on the island.
“The one who plays loses,” repeats the man and as much blaming for the lack of sights, when buying only one tube of the cream, ends up mixing the syllables in a litany that martyr it while checking the mattress under the sun of July. “The fact that Ñea tab”, He concludes.
