EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 29 March 2023 — A young Cuban was seriously injured, although his life was saved, after a shark attack on the southern coast of the province of Artemisa, state media reported on Tuesday.
The incident occurred last weekend when the 17-year-old was fishing with some relatives a few kilometers from the coast, near the town of Majana.
After the attack, he was transferred to a hospital in the area where he received first aid, according to the local newspaper El Artemiseño.
“He arrived in shock, with a lot of blood lost; the first thing was to give him a blood transfusion. Then he went to the operating room for a complex surgery due to the serious vascular damage to the arm and forearm,” the director of the center, Niurka Larrionda, explained to the provincial media.
After the intervention, the young man was transferred to the Juan Manuel Márquez pediatric hospital in Havana, because “his situation requires the intervention of specialists in angiology, orthopedics and traumatology,” the doctor explained.
Shark attacks in Cuba are unusual, although some cases are remembered, such as the surprise that some swimmers received last November by the appearance of a trio of sharks on the shore of a beach in the province of Camagüey.
In 2017, a 22-year-old swimmer died after a shark attack on the shore of Guardalavaca beach, in Holguín.
According to statistics cited by the official newspaper Juventud Rebelde, between 1956 and 2014, 44 attacks on humans were reported (39 unprovoked and five provoked), with 22 confirmed deaths.
In the seas that surround the Island, there are some 54 species of sharks, and most of them do not pose any danger to humans, but the three most dangerous for people are also present: the white, the tiger and the bull.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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