There are several inmates with high fever, joint pain, weakness and difficulty walking, among other symptoms.
HAVANA, Cuba. – Several inmates are affected by symptoms of arbovirus in the Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey, as reported by telephone this Thursday, October 23, the political prisoner Alieski Calderín Acosta.
Likewise, he stressed that the maximum rigor penitentiary center is infested with mosquitoes “like he had never seen” and reported the presence of several cases of inmates with symptoms such as high fever, joint pain, weakness and difficulty walking. Some patients, he said, present vomiting and diarrhea.
The political prisoner also regretted that in the Camagüey prison there is no fumigation nor any other action by the prison authorities to clean up the facilities.
Meanwhile, health care, according to Calderín Acosta, is “precarious,” with a lack of basic painkillers. For the prisoners who manage to reach the infirmary, the health personnel diagnose them with “a virus” and send them to drink a sugar-free herbal tea that “they don’t know what it is,” as the only treatment for any symptoms reported by those affected.
Nor have the authorities taken care to improve the diet of the inmates. There is no main course; The lunch and dinner menu consists of three tablespoons of rice (it does not reach 100 grams), rice soup and a cake of unknown composition, presumably made of wheat flour mixed with some indeterminate substance. Breakfast, for its part, consists of “a birthday roll” and the same sugar-free herbal tea that they administer to the sick.
As a consequence of this poor diet, Calderín Acosta reasons, the inmates are skeletal and malnourished, therefore their immune systems are surely depressed, which causes not only a higher rate of infections, but also that any disease, such as viruses in this case, attack them with greater force.
Calderín Acosta himself, currently suffering from arbovirus symptoms, stated that he had suffered from similar ailments on more than one occasion.
On the other hand, he stressed, for months there has been no captopril, the medication he needs to take to control his hypertension.
The political prisoner stressed that the inmates do not even have mosquito nets, making it impossible for them to protect themselves from mosquito bites.
Alieski Calderín Acosta, a bricklayer, 37 years old, has been in prison since November 7, 2012. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence for the alleged crime of sabotage after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the TRD El Encanto currency collection store, located on the boulevard in the city of Camaguey. He is registered as a political prisoner by the international human rights defense group Prisoners Defenders.
