LAS TUNAS, Cuba. — The Cuban Minister of Public Health (MINSAP) denies it: there are no hospitals collapsed due to dengue cases in our country, he says. But the danger exists, it is real. Widespread epidemic outbreaks throughout the national territory can devastate the Cuban population in the coming days if administrative apathy persists, the main risk factor for dengue in Cuba due to lack of community sanitation.
Abulia is lack of will or decreased energy, reluctance, negligence, passivity. Drinking water leaks or sewers turning streets and roads into puddles where domestic garbage accumulates for weeks due to inefficient public policies, becoming hosts to mosquitoes, is a repeated apathetic scene from one end of the country to the other, except in the areas where it lives. the wealthy political class.
Towns and cities where the aqueduct and sewage systems do not work properly, nor the collection and management of waste, have become hosts of disease-transmitting pests, a scenario favored by the negligent and passive actions of those who have administrative responsibility, which are the authorities. governments, led by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).
In its edition last Friday, the Newspaper 26an organ of the PCC in Las Tunas —a province with dengue transmission in four of its eight municipalities— published a headline on the front page that states: Take measures to cut dengue transmission. But when you turn the page, in the section Cards, finds a headline that says “Sewage discharges into the community”, which heads a note where a neighbor of the Santos neighborhood, in the municipality of Las Tunas, complains: “In my apartment you can’t use the bathroom because the dirty water comes out of the bathtub. Some neighbors and I fell ill with dengue.”
Epidemiologists know this: the ideal action to identify a risk factor is a cohort study, which is a comparison of the frequency of a disease between two populations, one exposed to risks while the other is exempt from them. This is an expensive study that takes time and is, furthermore, unnecessary, since epidemiologists are well aware of the social strata and the residential areas in which the highest cases of dengue are reported in Cuba, which is the majority of the archipelago where there are no foreign tourists or businessmen or leaders.
The sewage system of the city of Puerto Padre dates back to 1917. The municipal authorities of that time managed to get the American company that owned the central delights will install it. However, today it receives a much higher load than it was designed for, so leaks and mixtures of sewage water with those from drinking water leaks are frequent, producing puddles of “clean” water, the ones suitable for reproduction. mosquito Aedes aegypti. It should be noted that this does not happen only in Puerto Padre, but also in many other Cuban cities.
The official mantra is that “there are no resources” to repair the pipes, and thus the leaks and ponds increase; that “there is no oil” to take the garbage to the landfills; that there are no insecticides to spray; and, of course, because of the “Yankee blockade.” And then the authorities send inspectors to impose fines on people who do not have their houses as well ordered as they should be, so that they do not give lodging to the “killer mosquito.” And let us agree that today the majority of Cuban homes are not as organized as we once had them, because today in Cuba, more than order, survival is imposed, which does not constitute an ethical justification, but a state of legal necessity. .
If the state of inertia in sanitation continues in this way, with the public administration opting for coercion of the citizen through fines, there will be more dengue patients collapsing hospitals than they are today. So, the Minister of Public Health will not be able to deny it; and there will be deceased widening the cemeteries even more. But don’t just blame the neighbors for having their houses and patios like shelters from the Aedes aegypti –as if the “killer mosquito” were in home confinement and could not fly to public spaces – also blame those who, as people carrying apathy in themselves, having inescapable public responsibilities, have led an entire nation to the state of marasmus, understood as abandonment.
OPINION ARTICLE
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