Havana inaugurated a high-tech laboratory and a place for breeding insects for research purposes as a result of an international cooperation project.
France, the European Union (EU) and the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) of the island cooperated in this initiative, with the aim of modernizing infrastructure, expanding scientific capabilities and accompanying the training of teams that support public health in the Caribbean country.
The new laboratory of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) has a state-of-the-art sequencer and modernized genomics, bioinformatics, biotechnology and cellular microbiology units, details a report from the Cuban News Agency.
Furthermore, he emphasizes that with this new facility the IPK is in a position to apply new molecular biology methodologies, improve the diagnosis of parasitic diseases and strengthen the surveillance of diseases transmitted by vectors.
The IPK, founded in 1937, a national reference center for the study of infectious and tropical diseases, has played a decisive role in the research, diagnosis and control of epidemics in Cuba and the region.
This week that center confirmed the high circulation on the island of the dengue and chikungunya viruses, transmitted by the bite of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which has led to the declaration of the presence of an epidemic of both diseases, as well as the adoption of measures to stop transmission.
The day before, the Vice Minister of Public Health, Carilda Peña, said that the figures recorded by health institutions exceed 21 thousand cases treated with symptoms associated with these pathologies, and recognized that the transmission in communities and homes is greater than what was officially reported.
Three days ago, when offering an evaluation of the complex epidemiological scenario generated by both arboviruses, the national director of Epidemiology of the Minsap, Francisco Durán, described the situation as “acute” and pointed out that percentages of around “30%, 30-odd percent” of cases have been found in the Cuban population of more than 9.7 million inhabitants.
A third of the Cuban population has been infected with arbovirus, according to authorities
This percentage represents around a third of the Cuban population, which, according to official figureswas around 9.7 million at the end of 2024. This means that the number of patients would be over 3 million, although the specialist did not give a precise figure.
He explained that although the trend is downward, dengue transmission is in fourteen of the fifteen Cuban provinces, with greater complexity in the western provinces of Havana and Matanzas, and Ciego de Ávila (center).
An element again omitted by the health authorities was the number of fatalities due to the current arbovirus epidemic in the country. While cases of people who have died in the current epidemiological scenario are reported daily on the networks, as well as funeral homes and cemeteries with a number of deaths much higher than that recorded under normal conditions, the Round Table most recent report on the epidemiological situation ignored this issue.
Nor were death figures revealed at the government meeting of the week that ended. Only in mid-October did the Cuban authorities They reported the death of only three people due to serious complications of dengue, a statistic that is clearly very far from reality.
In the case of chikungunya, which appeared for the first time in Cuba in 2015 and since last June has expanded to 14 provinces, he pointed out that 98.5% of the cases are concentrated in Matanzas, Havana and Artemisa (west) and in the Cienfuegos, Villa Clara and Camagüey plants.
EFE/OnCuba.
