“Outbreaks of illness increase and official silence persists.” (YA!@Ya_Venezuela)
Juan Juan Almeida, 11 August 2015 — The suspicious increase in certain inopportune illnesses is now the most sensitive factor for the normal development of the Cuban medical mission in Venezuela.
During the present year, and especially in these last weeks, an alarming and strange increase has been reported in the number of Cubans who get sick while fulfilling their “internationalist” service.
Undisclosed official data reveal that up to week 28 of 2015, there have been 514 cases of Cubans affected by respiratory infections, mainly caused by outbreaks of H3N2 influenza, Rinovirus, Parainfluenza and Metapneumovirus. The states with the highest rate of those affected are the Distrito Capital, Barinas, Monagas, Falcón, Sucre, Nueva Esparta, Mérida, Trujillo, Vargas, Carabobo, Bolívar, Yaracuy, Amazonas, Cojedes and Lara.
It’s equally noticeable that by the end of week 29, also this year, there were already 33 new cases of dengue fever reported versus 33 in the previous week, bringing to more than 900 the total figure of those affected since January. And much more curious is that during the same time period, 17,391 Cubans have been under quarantine; of these, 12,870 have been in contact with dengue fever, suspected of having contracted Chikungunya fever and other undiagnosed fevers, while 4,184 colleagues were under watch for cholera.
The Party ideologues and the paranoiacs of MINIT do not hold cards without playing them and already have organized a whole novel of pathological persecution. They are taking advantage of the occasion to implement the usual model of fear, blaming such an anomalous situation on the premeditated undercover actions of their everlasting and eternal enemy, the CIA.
In spite of this melodrama, the reality is worrisome. Ever more so when, coincidentally, in the States of Aragua, Carabobo, Zulia, Distrito Capital and Cojedes during the same week, 90 nurses, 23 doctors, 29 laboratory technicians and 20 dentists, through negligence and/or bad manipulation of needles, scalpels and biological waste, suffered what are defined as “occupational accidents through exposure to patients’ blood and bodily fluids,” contaminating themselves with infections that are sometimes diagnosed and sometimes unknown.
The Venezuela medical mission is an important bulwark for Cuban propaganda, and the Cuban authorities, in addition to losing credibility, aren’t acknowledging a failure in this field. Then, in the face of so much going wrong, they developed in Havana in record time a detailed plan that they took to every head of the mission in the different Venezuelan states: a document of alert entitled “Epidemiological Update,” from which I took all these data.
The text orders the reprogramming of biosecurity courses among staff and requires all personnel (doctors, nurses, laboratory assistants, dentists, podiatrists, etc.) to pay special attention to secure methods in treating patients, as well as directing them to maintain constant communication and interchange with the new epidemiology monitoring centers.
In the Cuban health system, like the war in Angola, the casualties aren’t counted; the only thing that matters is victory.
Translated by Regina Anavy
