Cuban Cholera Epidemic Spreading to the Entire Island

A cholera epidemic has been unofficially reported from Cuba. On June 3, 2012, government controlled media reported the appearance of an acute diarrheal disease affecting 53 persons in Manzanillo, Eastern Cuba. Three persons were said to have succumbed to the illness initially.

Independent medical sources in South Florida confirmed the military isolation of the Celia Sanchez hospital complex in Manzanillo and the Municipal Hospital in nearby Bayamo. The latest reports from the media via the Miami herald revel at least 85 cases until last Sunday June 8. Cuban independent journalist sources report the deaths at anywhere from five to 15. However, Cuban health workers have admitted that the number of suspected cases in Granma rose from 332 to 346 and more general cases of diarrhea and vomiting rose from 3,422 to 3,998 and that 110 persons have been hospitalized,

Despite Cuba’s well-organized health services, epidemiologic controls and civil defense system capable of rapidly mobilizing government agencies and citizens' groups, as it does for tropical storms and hurricanes, the Cuban cholera epidemic has spread to Western Cuba. Presently, unofficial sources have reported that five cases of cholera have been diagnosed in Havana. Thus, in a matter of days, cholera has now been reported from Caimanera near the US Naval Base in Eastern Cuba to Havana.

While the US Public health Service and CDC have not come out with any recommendations for travelers, British public health authorities in the Cayman Islands issued a caution against travel to Cuba. Also, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen warned of potential dangers with regards to the presence of cholera in Cuba to travelers visiting the island form the United States.

But police kept up a heavy security presence at area hospitals and relatives were not allowed to visit patients with cholera, said Marquez. He was fired from his public health job after his wife, Tania de la Torre, became a human rights activist.

Cholera was declared to have been eradicated in Cuba no later than the early 1900s, but an ongoing outbreak in neighboring Haiti has killed more than 7,400 people and scores of Cuban doctors have worked there. A Florida woman and others in the Dominican Republic who visited Haiti came down with cholera in 2010 but survived.

Cuban health officials have also noted that there is currently an bout of dengue fever in the island. While dengue is endemic in Cuba and emerges periodically when the environmental circumstances are favorable for the mosquito vector, cholera is a new and dangerous epidemic that has placed the island and all points around it at risk of the contagion.

History

The first Doctors Day observance was March 30, 1933 in Winder, Georgia. Eudora Brown Almond, wife of Dr. Charles B. Almond, decided to set aside a day to honor physicians. This first observance included the mailing greeting cards and placing flowers on graves of deceased doctors. The red carnation is commonly used as the symbolic flower for National Doctors Day.On March 30, 1958, a Resolution Commemorating Doctors Day was adopted by the United States House of Representatives. In 1990, legislation was introduced in the House and Senate to establish a national Doctors Day. Following overwhelming approval by the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, on October 30, 1990, President George Bush signed S.J. RES. #366 (which became Public Law 101-473) designating March 30, 1991 as "National Doctors Day."Doctors Day marks the date that Crawford W. Long, M.D., of Jefferson, GA, administered the first ether anesthetic for surgery on March 30, 1842. On that day, Dr. Long administered ether anesthesia to a patient and then operated to remove a tumor from the man’s neck. Later, the patient would swear that he felt nothing during the surgery and wasn’t aware the surgery was over until he awoke.
[edit] Cuba
In Cuba, Doctors Day (December 3) commemorates the Birthday of Carlos Juan Finlay. Carlos J. Finlay (December 3, 1833 – August 20, 1915) was a Cuban physician and scientist recognized as a pioneer in yellow fever research. He was the first to theorize, in 1881, that a mosquito was a carrier, now known as a disease vector, of the organism causing yellow fever: a mosquito that bites a victim of the disease could subsequently bite and thereby infect a healthy person. A year later Finlay identified a mosquito of the genus Aedes as the organism transmitting yellow fever. His theory was followed by the recommendation to control the mosquito population as a way to control the spread of the disease.

ONE MORE DIFFERENTIAL FOR MR CHAVEZ ILLNESS: TERATOCARCINOMA

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is presently in Cuba preparing to undergo another surgical procedure for the illness that led me write a short op-ed piece here back in July 2011. As a matter of background, the onset of the illness was dated to mid-2011. Various pundits and commentators, some of them physicians, noted that a prostatic illness or cancer was unlikely, a colon malignancy was questioned, and a bladder malignancy did not fit the available history. Indeed, there has not been a single medical report or medical press conference on Mr. Chavez’s illness. Chavez himself has delivered or read some reports, but nothing too technical and usually incomplete. Others have proposed that Mr. Chavez is suffering from a sarcomatous tumor, either a benign or somewhat malignant sarcoma for example. But again, the management for this type of lesion often involves radiation first and surgery later. Mr. Chavez was treated with surgery and then repeated courses of chemotherapy that left him with a shaved scalp and generalized swelling. One further possibility can be added, again in view of the scarcity of official medical data. The tumor or illness at hand threatening Mr. Chavez health fits the clinical picture of a teratocarcinoma. The latter type of tumor has a number of cell lines, hence the importance of Mr. Chavez in pointing out that there were “células carcinógenas.” The original pathology probably revealed a low percentage of neoplastic, aggressive cells. The bulk of the tumor was removed and chemotherapy was expected to do away with the remainder malignant cells. However, at this time, Mr. Chavez likely has a recurrence of the tumor arising from the most malignant and aggressive neoplastic cells that escaped the previously applied treatment.Furthermore, the recurrence of such a type of tumor suggests that Mr. Chavez may be suffering from an immune disorder. Exactly, he may be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This in itself explains the secrecy of the entire process, the avoidance of Venezuelan health centers and medical professionals and the negation to go to Brazil for management and cancer treatment. In short, we propose to rule out TERATOCARCINOMA in the presence of HIV infection in the case of Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez. Dr. Antonio Gordon