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Vol. 80/No. 13 April 4, 2016
Letter: Cuba mobilizes against Zika virus
On March 4, the morning after I arrived in Havana, my landlady knocked
sharply on my door and said, “Get ready quick, Matilde, the fumigators
are here.” She was ready with a large sheet to cover my bed, and her son
was quickly putting things away in the kitchen. Friday was our scheduled
day for the weekly indoor spraying designed to reach every room in every
dwelling in Havana and other cities around the island.
Cuban President Raúl Castro has mobilized 9,000 regular army troops and
200 police officials to supplement the many thousands of members of the
“Ejército Juvenil del Trabajo” [Youth Army of Labor], young men carrying
out their mandatory military service doing mosquito control.
Every room has to be closed tight for 45 minutes after spraying, while
residents and their pets wait outside. The spray is hard on those with
asthma and other respiratory diseases, although the newspapers say that
in such cases a nurse accompanies the fumigators and will take the
affected person to a clinic if necessary. But the only complaints I have
heard have to do with fumigators not showing up or not doing their job.
On March 10, the Public Health Ministry announced the fourth confirmed
case of Zika in Cuba and stressed the importance of anyone with a fever
or other symptoms reporting right away to a doctor. Cuba’s policy is to
hospitalize anyone with symptoms and treat them in a special facility
with mosquito nets while waiting for results of the blood test for Zika.
There have been no cases in Cuba of pregnant women infected with the virus.
The second phase of the anti-Zika war has just begun, in which the
weekly spraying of homes and workplaces is being supplemented by the
mobilization of medical students and public health workers to go house
to house and community to community with an education and detection
campaign.
I have been particularly struck by this all-out effort because I arrived
in Cuba after a week in Puerto Rico, where I saw no evidence of any
special efforts to confront the Zika crisis.
— Matilde Zimmermann
Havana, Cuba
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