Cuban Healthcare: A news chronology

(From stories compiled by FOCAL, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas)

2006

September 7: At least five patients who recently received surgery died of hospital-acquired infections at the Calixto García Clinical and Surgical Hospital, in the City of Havana. The hospital has ten operating rooms and performs the majority of surgeries in the country. Two hospital nurses are conducting an anonymous study of the deaths due to unspecified pathologies. Preliminary studies indicate that patients suffer complications after contracting infections because of leaks and moisture on the walls of the operating rooms, and a shortage of drinking water and cleaning products at the hospital. (Cubanet, 7/9/06)

September 12: The start of the week-long 14th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) forced the Cuban government to suspend its spraying with military planes, but it has not cut short the intense offensive against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the potentially deadly dengue virus. Although the government has kept mum on the spread of dengue fever in this Caribbean island nation, sources close to the Public Health Ministry told the press that several thousand cases have been reported in Havana alone, where special hospital wards have been created to care for the sick. The authorities say everything is under control, while emphasising the need to keep up the health and awareness-raising campaign. "Let's prevent the proliferation of the mosquitoes. Everyone must be aware of the problem," said the host of a show on the CH TV state-run channel. According to Dr. José San Martín Martínez, director of the Public Health Ministry's National Surveillance and Anti-Vector Unit, "there is no danger of a dengue epidemic" in Cuba. (IPS, 12/9/06)

September 22: The status of the intensive campaign underway against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that can transmit dengue fever, was at the center of a meeting of presidents of the People's Power provincial committees of the island. The two-day gathering was presided over by Cuba's First Vice President Raul Castro and other top Communist Party and government officials. Participants analyzed the battle underway throughout the island against the mosquito, and the measures adopted to try and eliminate the dangerous vector. Speaking on the issue, Raul Castro said that the battle must be won at the grassroots level, with the active involvement of every citizen, and raising people's awareness about the risks stemming from the presence of mosquito breeding grounds. He made an appeal not to let up on the systematic eradication work, and to find rational solutions to whatever obstacles that may occur in this fight. To date, no figures have been released about the number of people affected by the disease, but doctors say cases have been detected in Havana and eastern cities like Ciego de Avila and Santiago de Cuba. Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly of the People's Power, was not reported to have attended the meeting. (Granma, EFE, 23/9/06)

October 2: In a letter to the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), the Cuban government acknowledged in August the occurrence of dengue hemorrhagic fever in Cuba, although the outbreak has not been confirmed domestically. "In August, we received a communication from the Minister of Health (José Ramón Balaguer) informing of recent cases of dengue fever in Cuba, even some instances of the hemorrhagic variant (which can be fatal)," said PAHO representative on the island, Lea Guido. (EFE, 2/10/06)

October 11: Benito Martinez Abrogan, Cuba's oldest person and star of the government's efforts to promote healthy lives for its oldest citizens, died at the age of 126. ``He died this afternoon. He had been in intensive care, but old age was the main problem,'' said an official at Ciego de Avila Hospital in central Cuba. Martinez, who attributed his longevity to a healthy diet of fresh vegetables, some meat and only occasional consumption of alcohol, was born in Haiti in 1880 and migrated to Cuba to work on sugar cane plantations in 1925, according to his Cuban documents. There was no definitive proof of his age as he had no birth certificate. The toothless centenarian was the star attraction of Cuba's 120-Club, a group formed by Fidel Castro's personal physician Eugenio Selman to promote healthy lives for Cuba's elderly. (Reuters, 11/10/06)

October 31: A low and declining birth rate, one that does not provide for replacement of the population, combined with high life expectancy has Cuban authorities concerned about who is going to do the country's work in the coming decades, including caring for more and more old people. "For 28 years the fertility rate in Cuba has been below the level needed for replacing the population," said the official Communist daily Granma in an article underscoring the worrisome demographics. Though officials of the nearly 48-year-old one-party state have been looking at this matter for years, Granma says it is becoming "more disturbing" lately, as more and more women decide either to have only one baby or forgo the experience of motherhood entirely. Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga, director of the national office of population studies, said the falling birth rate is the main reason for the aging of the Cuban population.  Other factors are the relatively high level of education achieved by Cuban females and easy and free access to birth control and state-provided abortion. But material and economic factors also come into play. Many women are discouraged from having children, he said, by a lack of housing and other things and the high cost of living. He also noted the scarcity of support services for small children such as day care and the difficulty in obtaining "la canastilla," or "basket" of infant-care items that used to be readily available at subsidized prices. Another factor pointed out by experts on demography is the inclination to emigrate among women of child-bearing age. (EFE, 31/10/06) 

October 31: A father whose son died on holiday in Cuba has demanded to know why his body was returned with his lungs, kidney and part of his brain missing. Andrew Redfern, 37, from the Wirral, Merseyside, UK, died after slipping and hitting his face on a marble floor in a hotel lobby in Havana in August. When his body underwent post-mortem tests in the UK it was discovered that several of his organs were missing. His father, Lawrence, from Inverness, said he had no idea what had happened. Mr Redfern, 58, said: "If his organs were taken for transplants then I wouldn't have minded but nobody mentioned anything. "Somebody just removed them without asking permission and no one seems to know why." (BBC, 31/10/06)

November 5: The Provincial Committee of the Cuban Communist Party in the City of Havana, where the biggest social investment plans on the island are underway, pointed out deficiencies in the progress of the work, particularly in the health sector, reported the weekly newspaper "Tribuna de la Habana". The first secretary of the Communist Party in the City of Havana, Pedro Sáez, expressed the "urgency to modify the methods and styles of work of the Party, in cases where subjective constraints have prevented meeting the deadlines for the improvement and expansion of some hospitals", according to the source. Sáez presided over a meeting of the Provincial Committee of the PCC to examine the progress of the work of the so called "Battle of Ideas" program, aimed in particular at improving and expanding hospitals, cultural institutions and schools, among other social programs. (EFE, 5/11/06)

November 6: In Cuba, alcoholism affects five percent of people over 15, including both clinical forms of alcoholism: binge drinking and heavy drinking on a regular basis. "In our country the proportion of men to women within that five percent figure is approximately three men to one woman", psychiatrist Ricardo González told the press. In his view, such comparative data justify the statement that alcoholism is not a health problem among women in Cuba, although preventive policies take it into account because of the enormous risk to unborn and breastfeeding children. According to González, the head of Addiction Treatment Services at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital, and president of the Cuban Society of Psychiatry, alcoholism is determined by "a mosaic of factors," in which hedonism (pleasure-seeking) and socio-cultural circumstances play an important part. In seeking the causes of alcoholism in women, "one must not lose sight of the higher frequency of depression among the female sex, worldwide, and the relatively frequent use of alcohol to alleviate symptoms." Women are also more susceptible to liver diseases caused by alcohol, in a shorter time and with a lower consumption than men. "I hit bottom when I decided I didn't want to carry on living like that and I threw myself off the balcony," a woman said. A few days after leaving the hospital, she found an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group in her neighbourhood that helped her reclaim her life. (IPS, 6/11/06)

November 13: The second season of Male Sexual Diversity cinema opened its doors in Havana, aimed at preventing sexually transmitted diseases and to warn about the risks of HIV. In Cuba "there has been great progress towards accepting" gays, said Rubén de Armas, member of a group on HIV prevention and control, and organizer of the event. Local media has not publicized the event. (AFP, 13/1106)

November 14: An epidemic of dengue fever that flooded hospitals and may have killed as many as 100 Cubans has been brought under control by a fumigation campaign involving 300,000 students, pensioners and healthcare workers. The outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus was the worst in a quarter of a century and appears to have afflicted thousands during its peak in September and October. The infection rate has slowed to only a few dozen new cases this month, said a senior doctor familiar with the scope of the epidemic, who added that the response was initially slowed by government secrecy.  The physician complained bitterly about the veil initially imposed by Communist Party officials. The ostensible purpose was to avoid panicking the public, but the demand that the epidemic be treated as a confidential security matter was strongest in early September, when preparations were underway for the 14th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, to be held in Havana. "We were forbidden even to refer to it as dengue fever, because the official position is that dengue was eradicated in the 1980s," said the doctor, who has nearly three decades of experience in Havana hospitals. "We were compelled to call it 'fever syndrome.' "  Cuba's Public Health Ministry later confirmed the outbreak, telling the Pan American Health Organization representative in Havana on October 13 that the country was suffering "a classic dengue outbreak" and that about 10% of the cases involved children. The ministry gave no count of the afflicted and said that an unspecified number of deaths were "associated with preexisting chronic conditions." (Los Angeles Times, 14/11/06)

November 20: Cuban official mass media admitted that the intense prevention and fumigation campaign carried out in the last several months has not managed to prevent the spread of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries the dengue virus. The campaign has mobilized thousands of people across the entire country to spray every home. (EFE, 21/11/06)