From power and water shortages to mosquitoes... Cuba, dengue fever cases increase 10 times

Cuban residents are suffering from a severe energy shortage and are suffering from a double whammy of mosquito-borne infectious diseases. This year, the number of dengue fever patients increased more than 10 times compared to previous years.

According to estimates from the Global Dengue Fever Observatory on the 10th (local time), the cumulative number of confirmed cases of dengue fever in Cuba as of October this year reached 15,859. This figure is 10.6 times higher than the average for the same period over the past five years. Monthly, the spread is becoming steeper, with 3,214 cases in August, 4,102 cases in September, and 4,624 cases in October.

The causes are complex. First, due to extreme power outages lasting more than 20 hours a day, the frequency of exposure to mosquitoes has increased as residents sleep with their doors open to beat the heat. In addition, chronic disruptions in tap water supply led to households storing water in inappropriate containers, leading to a rapid increase in mosquito larvae habitats. To make matters worse, quarantine vehicles stopped operating due to lack of fuel, and even garbage collection was paralyzed, causing waste to pile up throughout the city and encouraging a surge in the mosquito population.

The problem is that although the number of patients is rapidly increasing, it is difficult to receive appropriate treatment due to a shortage of medicines and the collapse of the medical system. Due to chronic economic difficulties and a shortage of supplies, including food, there is a shortage of even basic medicines such as fever reducers in hospitals and pharmacies. As it becomes difficult to obtain even basic fever reducers such as paracetamol, patients suffering from pain and high fever continue to rely on medicines obtained from the black market or folk remedies.

Due to the nature of dengue fever, which has no treatment that directly eliminates the virus, symptomatic treatment that provides sufficient nutrition to patients and relieves symptoms with electrolytes and antipyretics is absolutely necessary, but severe food shortages and depletion of medicines are preventing even this.

It is presumed that many deaths have occurred as the number of infected people continues to rise due to a shortage of medicine and food shortages, but it is difficult to determine the exact number of hospitalized patients and deaths due to the absence of official records and information control by the authorities.

Spanish media outlet Infobar reported that health experts are running out of diagnostic reagents and platelet testing equipment in hospitals, so doctors are relying only on clinical judgment without objective tests.