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.