Cuba’s top epidemiologist tells CNN in Manzanillo that cholera has not spread

Posted on Saturday, 07.14.12

Cuba's top epidemiologist tells CNN in Manzanillo that cholera has not
spread
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuba's national director of epidemiology has told a CNN crew, the first
foreign journalists to visit the focus of a cholera outbreak, that the
disease has not spread to other regions and that the government has not
lied about the number of cases.

But the dissident journalist who first reported the cholera outbreak in
the southeastern province of Granma in late June said Friday that a
doctor in the poor Havana neighborhood of Mantilla had told him of three
confirmed cholera cases there.

Public health officials in Mantilla halted the sale of liquid foods on
July 11 because of the cholera, said Calixto Martinez of Hablemos Press
— Let's Talk Press. About 30 suspected cholera cases have now been
reported in the capital, he added.

In Granma, provincial health officials repeated Thursday night that the
outbreak was under control and said the number of people hospitalized
with cholera-like symptoms dropped from 81 on Wednesday to 67 on Thursday.

Confirmed cholera cases in the same period rose from 118 to 126 — 96 of
them in the Granma city of Manzanillo — because it takes laboratories a
week or more to confirm the diagnosis, according to the officials.

They also urged residents to continue avoiding unnecessary travel out of
the region and repeated instructions for purifying water and hand washing.

Although the provincial officials have appeared on local television
nightly since Saturday to inform residents about the epidemic, the
government in Havana has issued only one statement, on July 3,
confirming three cholera deaths.

Dissidents and independent journalists allege the true death toll is
between five and 15 and that the government is covering up cases of
cholera in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Camaguey and other cities.

"We can categorically say that there is no other outbreak in any other
province," Dr. Manuel Santin Peña, national director of epidemiology,
told CNN. The few cases outside Granma were people who had been in the
province, he added, giving no further details.

The CNN report noted that "Cuban health officials allowed a CNN crew to
be the first media to film in a hospital" in Manzanillo "and speak with
doctors there about the ongoing effort to control the cholera outbreak."

No other foreign journalists in Havana are known to have travelled to
Granma since dissidents first reported the outbreak in late June. The
government has expelled journalists whose reports displeased it.

The CNN report said doctors at the Celia Sánchez Manduley Hospital in
Manzanillo initially believed the outbreak of diarrhea and vomiting was
due to food poisoning because the first cases in mid-June attended the
same birthday party.

But then people who were not at the party began arriving at the
hospital, sometimes 30 in a single day, hospital director Julio Cesar
Fonseca Rivera told CNN. Manzanillo residents now refer to the cholera
outbreak simply as el evento — the event.

Buckets of bleach sit at the entrances to hospitals and official
buildings for people to dip their hands and the soles of their shoes,
CNN reported. Authorities shut down kiosks that sell food made with
water, and banned fishing and swimming in local waters.

Cuban authorities have not yet commented on the variant of the cholera
bacteria that caused the outbreak. A 2010 cholera epidemic killed more
than 7,000 people in Haiti, where several hundred Cuban medical
personnel have been working for years.

Canada's Public Health Department and the European Centre for Disease
Prevention and Control on Thursday issued cautions to travelers heading
to Cuba, advising them to take precautions eating and drinking and wash
their hands frequently.

Cuba's government blocked any public word of the first outbreak of
dengue fever in 1976 for several months. Scientists believe it was
brought to the island by Cuban soldiers returning from Africa, but Fidel
Castro blamed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Government officials also covered up for almost a year the outbreak of
optical neuropathy, which can blind victims, that hit more than 30,000
people 1992-1993. The disease was caused by the malnutrition unleashed
when Moscow ended its subsidies to the island, but Havana claimed it was
caused more by excessive smoking and drinking.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/14/2894615/cubas-top-epidemiologist-tells.html