Cuba Ignores Sanitary Crisis To Not Frighten The Tourists
By Juan Juan Almeida
Translating Cuba
August 29, 2017

Holguín, the Cuban province reporting the greatest increase in cases of zika, dengue and haemorragic conjunctivitis, might experience an increase in the level of contagion with the arrival of travellers wanting to visit the area in the upcoming carnivals programmed from 17th to 20th August.

Doctor Luis Arlet González, Provincial Director of Public Health, Julio Caballero, First Secretary of the Communist Party in the town, and Julio César Estupiñán, President of the Provincial Assembly of People Power (the local government), have more than once warned about the danger of celebrating  carnivals in the middle of this epidemic. But the First Secretary of the Communist Party in the province, during the last meeting of official organisations, made known the decision not to cancel the merriment for fear of frightening the tourists.

“It seems unbelievable that with the number of cases of zika, dengue and conjunctivitis reported daily, they could think of holding celebrations. For the Party, as always, all they are interested in is the income raised by filling the nearly 5,400 homes dedicated to tourism and they play the game without thinking that the city’s principal value lies in the inhabitants’ welcome and the beauty of the town set in 60 kilometers of beach and sun. Tourists look for contact and that, without a doubt, increases the contagion which is expected to soon reach pandemic levels”, says a frightened doctor at the “Vladimir Ilich Lenin” University General Hospital in the town.

The government recently provided funding for what is called “Operation Good Health”, which involves mobilising volunteers to carry out fumigations, and includes personnel able to locate infected people and raise awareness using the local media. But, in spite of these efforts, the number of patients increases daily.

Travel agencies receiving inquiries from travellers worried about the local situation avoid raising fear and uncertainty among overseas visitors. The provincial authorities decided to lock away those patients labelled as most contagious, but when the admissions at the “Lucía Iñiguez Landín” Hospital Clínico Quirúrgico in Holguín were overwhelmed they found themselves obliged to open up the nursing facility to take in the affected people.

People with contagious epidemic haemorragic conjunctivitis are being locked away in classrooms and lodgings in Celia Sánchez Manduley University, a long-established school for social workers, which, incidentally, has announced that the start of the next course will be postponed until September 20th, or until further notice.

Nevertheless, in the face of the incomprehensible decision to proceed with the carnival preparations, and in the closing stages of the preparations for the festivities in the provincial stadium and the busy Los Álamos and Libertadores Avenues, the local authorities have pronounced themselves satisfied on becoming aware on August 10th that Havana has ordered the activation in the province of the protection and security plan.

All the infantry units were quartered, the air force, the anti-aircraft defences and the navy were put on alert. But as the saying goes, nothing good lasts forever; such a colossal military mobilisation was not because of the epidemic, but because  General Raúl Castro, president of the Council of State and the Ministries of the Republic, was on vacation this weekend in his paradise hideaway in Cayo Saetía, on the north coast of East Cuba.

Translated by GH