Students at the University of Medical Sciences Continue Without Classes / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

Spraying for mosquitoes that cause dengue fever. Source: en.mercopress.com
For the second week in a row all institutes devoted to medical education and health technology in Havana have suspended classes.

Students were taken from their classrooms in order to screen people in Havana who are suffering from fevers, and to supervise the control of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in different municipalities. The suspension of classes is in order to strengthen every area of health in the prevention and early detection of new cases of Dengue.

Students are required to spend all the hours of the morning on each of the routes established for the investigation, and this must be completed before they appear for the territorial clinic debriefing and for further analysis from the physicians directing hygiene and epidemiology .

Some of the students participating in this activity do so under threat; those not attending this activity can be expelled from their respective careers. The refusal of many of these students is due to the fact that a number of homes remain closed or in the worst case prefer to close their doors because they do not trust the epidemiological work.

Public Health directors have recently reported continued detection of new cases and the work of investigation and mosquito control will have to be reinforced by the Youth Labor Army (EJT) and young people of Compulsive Military Service age.

September 24 2012