“It looks like a city full of zombies”: the severe epidemic of mosquito-borne viral diseases facing Cuba amid a health collapse

Sources consulted by BBC Mundo say they are aware of several suspected deaths due to the “virus” in recent months.

The number of new chikungunya infections rose by 71% in just seven days, the Cuban Health Ministry said last week, while PAHO estimated the total number of cases of the disease at 25,995.

However, a large proportion of those affected refuse to go to medical centers unless they are very serious, so the actual number is not known.

BBC Mundo spoke to several Cubans who shared their experiences with the virus on the island.

“I was working and felt a pain in my knee, as if I was carrying a heavy weight. When I tried to get up from the chair, I couldn’t get up, it was very difficult for me to walk. That’s how it started,” recalls Hansel, a 31-year-old engineer from Havana.

This happened about two months ago. The next day his symptoms worsened.

“I woke up with pain throughout my body, joints, feet, fingers, both knees, lower back, shoulders, wrists and fingers…”

Hansel describes what he suffered as “a kind of arthritis, as if you were suddenly an old person.”

This was followed by a high fever of up to 39 °C for three days, combined with pain.

These persisted even though the temperature dropped, and on the fifth day, he explains, he developed a rash all over his body.

Silvia (name fictitious as she does not wish to be identified) told the BBC that her mother and grandmother in the province of Pinar del Río, on the western end of the island, were very sick, also because of the “virus”.

“I’m telling you this because they are incapable,” he begins.

Silvia reports that both suffer from tremors, fevers of up to 39.5 degrees and severe joint pain that makes it impossible for them to get out of bed.

What are they suffering from? It could be dengue, chikungunya, oropuche or another virus. Neither Hansel nor Silvia’s family knows for sure because they didn’t go to the medical centers. They consider it a waste of their time and the scarce energy reserves that the “virus” leaves them.

In Cuban hospitals, Silvia testifies, “there are no conditions for admitting people. Everything has collapsed, even the children’s hospitals. There is no diagnosis as such; they only send fluids, paracetamol and paracetamol for joint pain.”

“The truth is that what we are experiencing is very precarious. People are just spending it at home as best they can, practically without walking, which is typical of the pain,” he says.

A 50-year-old professor from Havana also assured us anonymously that “very few” go to medical centers after an illness.

“Almost everyone I know doesn’t go. People choose not to because there is no way to make a sure diagnosis in these facilities, nor are there any medicines. You have to buy them in the informal market, or have a family member or friend send them from outside, or have them given to you by someone who lives here,” he says.

Cuba defines itself as a “medical power” for certain achievements in recent decades that other larger or richer countries have not achieved, from training a large legion of doctors and deploying international health missions to developing its own biotechnology industry that has developed a homegrown vaccine against Covid-19.

However, the worsening of the endemic economic crisis that the country is suffering today is putting its health system in an extremely precarious state.

Most hospitals are completely lacking in equipment, materials and medicines, which prevents them from providing the minimum medical and hygienic conditions for patient care.

What’s more, the exodus of recent years has seen thousands of Cuban doctors move abroad, leaving behind collapsed services on the island, unfilled shifts and a chronic overload of staff working under intense pressure for salaries that are around $30 a month at the real exchange rate.

BBC Mundo contacted the Cuban government requesting an interview with a health authority but received no response.

“National authorities have implemented surveillance and response measures, including strengthening epidemiological and laboratory surveillance, standardizing clinical management in health services, and implementing vector control interventions targeting areas with the highest transmission rates,” WHO/PAHO told us.

The extreme situation in which Cuba finds itself not only affects the treatment of patients with dengue, chikungunya and oropouche fever, but also favors the spread of these diseases.

“Hygienic conditions in homes and surrounding areas influence the spread of vectors that transmit these diseases,” PAHO answers our question about the influence of factors such as power outages, water shortages or the accumulation of garbage.

Others express it more graphically.

“When they turn off the power and you can’t use fans, air conditioning or other devices that help fight mosquitoes, they come and bite you,” complains Hansel.

Added to this, adds the engineer, “the problem of garbage cans on the corners of neighborhoods, of which there are sometimes many, and which are not collected or accumulate there, and all this also creates mosquitoes and problems.”

The Cuban government currently estimates the death toll from the “virus” at 47, while the WHO/PAHO accepts the official figures as good.

However, independent experts believe the real number could be higher, and several people BBC Mundo spoke to are aware of some recent and nearby deaths due to the epidemic.

“I know two dead people at close range. Both are elderly people, about eighty years old. One of them was referred to the Sancti Spíritus Provincial Hospital and the other was left in a small therapy room at the Fomento Hospital,” explained the aforementioned professor.

Another major concern is the impact these viruses leave behind, the long-term extent of which is unknown.

Currently, many patients report suffering from varying degrees of pain and limitations for weeks and even months after healing.

“I still have pain in my fingers, for example when closing and squeezing my hand, I find it difficult to open buttons (glasses), my shoulders hurt and my back also sags a little. And that was more than a month ago,” complains Hansel.

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