Havana/More than a month after the United States issued a travel alert for Cuba due to the rise in infections chikungunya and much longer since the population of the Island began to suffer – at least since this summer – from the onslaught of unidentified arboviruses due to lack of reagents, the authorities are beginning to act.
In the coming days, the Ministry of Public Health assures in a statement published on Sundaythe first clinical study on chikungunya will begin, which will take place in four hospitals in the provinces of Matanzas and Havana. The objective of the trial, the text indicates, is “to evaluate the effectiveness of the Cuban medicine Juzvinza in the treatment of inflammatory joint manifestations that persist in many patients once the infection has been overcome.”
The statement confirms the majority presence of this virus, whose increase is due, explains María Guadalupe Guzmán Tirado, director of Research, Diagnosis and Reference of the Pedro Kourí Institute (IPK), “to the fact that the virus had not circulated before with the current intensity, which explains the low levels of immunity in the population.”
The priority, confirmed Ileana Morales Suárez, director of Science and Technological Innovation of the Ministry of Health, is “the beginning” of research related to chikungunya, “a disease with a more recent presence on the Island.”
The objective of the trial, the text indicates, is “to evaluate the effectiveness of the Cuban medicine Juzvinza in the treatment of inflammatory joint manifestations.”
Salud published its statement just one day after the doctor Perla María Trujillo Pedrozaa specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine at the Manuel Piti Fajardo Polyclinic in Santo Domingo (Villa Clara) and with years of experience in provincial hospitals, decided to break the silence on his Facebook wall with a writing in which he denounced the health situation in the country.
In it, the specialist was “very concerned about this chikungunya situation,” and cried out: “If the first cases date back to July 2025, how is it possible that there is still no clinical guideline for the management of this disease?” At the same time, he asked: “Wake up. Cuban doctors are improvising on the fly in the treatment of chikungunya, especially in its subacute phase.”
The doctor said that in a hospital ward she attended to 47 patients with symptoms compatible with the virus. “Of them, 34 had an evolution of more than 15 days and 28 were in the subacute stage. That is 82%, well above what is reported in the literature.” His testimony also warned of the complications of the disease when it evolves into a chronic condition: “This causes a violent, disabling polyarthritis. What will become of the poor economy of this country when it rains down medical certificates or licenses for workers who must care for its almost disabled elderly?”
The next day, the specialist wrote on the subject again, stating several hypotheses why in Cuba there are so many patients “evolving to a subacute stage.” Among them, “poor management of the acute stage of the disease (from the beginning of symptoms until 15 days)” and poor medical management in general, due to lack of medications or inappropriate use of those prescribed in health centers.
People’s poor nutrition, which leads them to have a poor immune system, and “factors related to chronic stress suffered by a high percentage of our population, which is associated with a non-competent neuro-immuno-endocrine system” are other possible reasons he points out. In addition, he indicates, there may be cases of “co-infection” with other surrounding arboviruses or a high number of Cubans with pre-existing diseases, which also weaken them.
The specialist wrote on the subject again, exposing several hypotheses as to why in Cuba there are so many patients “evolving to a subacute stage.”
None of this is mentioned in the ministerial statement from two days ago, which generally states that “the country deploys integrated actions within the National Arbovirus Control Plan,” and that these actions “are part of a national strategy that articulates efforts from science, public health and innovation, and respond to the complex epidemiological situation that the disease presents in the country.”
They do so, they indicate, “taking advantage of the valuable experiences” left by the confrontation with the covid-19 pandemic, and with three fundamental objectives, according to the statements of Morales Suárez: “counteract the infestation rates of the mosquito vector, perfect the clinical treatment of the disease and reduce or eliminate the consequences it leaves in recovered patients.”
Meanwhile, citizen complaints continue to multiply. “When are they going to say that this virus, that this pandemic, is killing people?”, Kenya Tumbarell Tamayo, alias, asked this Monday Lola La Negrita Cubanin a video on the verge of tears published on his TikTok account. “When are they going to recognize that there are no medications? When are they going to recognize that the few medications that we are acquiring are on the street? It is because a family member, a friend, sends them, or because we have the possibility of acquiring them at a premium, because there is not enough to meet a need as basic as that.”
Tumbarell then continues to reel off, already crying, questions that contain what everyone knows: “When are they going to say that these things would have been avoided if there weren’t so many sewers, if there wasn’t so much dirt, if the mosquitoes hadn’t proliferated so much?” Until when?, cries to the sky Tumbarell, who asserts: “I don’t want to talk and I want to say everything, and I don’t want to look for problems and I want to look for them all, because the most difficult thing for a human being is to feel tied hand and foot, and lose hope and lose composure and lose equanimity.”
“When are they going to say yes, we need help, when there is no one left here, when the species becomes extinct, when this beautiful land disappears?” he reproaches the Government. Cuba only hurts, he concludes, “to us Cubans, to those on foot, who can’t take it anymore.”
