Cuba mute in the time of cholera

Cuba mute in the time of cholera

Castro government strong on public health, weak on public information in
response to outbreak.
Nick MiroffJuly 13, 2012 13:47

Cuba media cholera 2012 07 13
Cubans only relying on local media such as the official newspaper of the
Cuban Communist Party, Granma, miss important information about a
cholera outbreak in the eastern region of the island. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

HAVANA, Cuba — A cholera outbreak in eastern Cuba has put the best and
worst of the island's image-conscious socialist system on stark display.

Cuba's well-regarded public health system has responded aggressively to
the disease, quickly treating patients, providing clean water and
mobilizing a sanitation campaign. They say the rate of infection is
diminishing, and the outbreak appears to be almost entirely limited to
an area around the eastern city of Manzanillo, where it has killed three
senior citizens and sickened at least 110.

Such information is critical to Cubans worried the disease could spread
across the island and reach their families. Only, they'd have to be
watching CNN to get it.

Anxious Cubans who have looked to state-controlled news broadcasts and
newspapers for up-to-date information about the cholera outbreak have
instead found the usual fare of dull crop reports, government propaganda
and anti-American editorials.

Castro government opponents and south Florida Cuban exiles have gladly
stepped in to fill the void, claiming the cholera outbreak has been far
worse than official versions. Those accounts quote dissident activists
in eastern Cuba and other locals describing chaotic conditions at
clinics, a shortage of hygiene products and a much higher number of
infected patients.

Health officials in the Manzanillo area have reportedly been giving
regular health updates on local television, but Cuba's national media
has been noticeably silent. By saying so little for so long, the
government lets the rumors stand, even if the truth is otherwise.

"The number of cases is dropping," said Dr. Manuel Santin Peña, Cuba's
national director of epidemiology, in an interview with CNN, the first
foreign media outlet which the government has spoken to and allowed to
visit a hospital in the Manzanillo area.

"That doesn't make us confident so much as make us work to intensify all
our preventive measures so that in the next few weeks we can stop the
outbreak," Santin said.

Such reassurances were nowhere to be found Friday. Instead, the
Communist party newspaper Granma reported on Cuba's Olympic hopefuls,
the political crisis in Paraguay, and a highway repair project in the
province of Granma, the same place where the outbreak has occurred.
There wasn't a word about cholera.

This despite the first outbreak on the island since the 1880s, when Cuba
was a Spanish colony.

In recent years Cubans have been increasingly outspoken in venting their
frustrations at the timidity of the island's state-controlled media. The
outlets are notorious for staying silent on major news developments
until powerful Communist party officials give permission.

Cuban President Raul Castro himself has chided state broadcasters and
newspapers in his public speeches, urging them to hold government
bureaucrats to account and expose wrongdoing.

But the cholera outbreak has shown once more that when the news is not
good news, it tends to go unreported. That information vacuum is a gift
to the dissident blogs and US-government funded broadcasters like Radio
and TV Marti that the Cuban government says it loathes.

More from Cuba: The Revolution, televised

Cuban authorities have said almost nothing about the disease since a
July 3 statement acknowledging it has caused three deaths and sickened
53. That statement attributed the cholera to contaminated well water,
and gave no indication where the bacteria may have come from.

"We have the necessary resources to treat patients at all of our medical
facilities," the statement said. "We urge the public to observe proper
sanitary measures with their personal hygiene, water and food."

Thousands of Cuban medical personnel have worked in neighboring Haiti,
where more than 500,000 cases of cholera have been detected in the past
two years and at least 7,000 have died. That outbreak has also spread
across Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic.

Not surprisingly, anti-Castro lawmakers representing heavily
Cuban-American districts in south Florida have used the outbreak as a
cudgel against the Castro government, presenting it as a new reason not
to visit the island.

Cuban health officials have acknowledged — again, to the international
press, not Cuba's state media — that at least one case has been detected
in Havana. But the patient appeared to have picked up the bacteria from
the Manzanillo area where the outbreak is centered. There has been no
sign of special concern at hospitals in the capital.

In Manzanillo the government has responded by distributing soap and
chlorine tablets for water treatment, and running public information
announcements reminding locals to carefully wash their hands, drink
treated water and avoid swimming or fishing in potentially contaminated
areas. No quarantine is in effect, but local officials have urged
residents to avoid non-essential travel.

Cholera kills as many as 120,000 people worldwide each year, according
to the World Health Organization, and sickens between 3 and 5 million.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/120713/cuban-media-cholera-outbreak-manzanillo