Two medical sources confirm to 14ymedio that they have received this instruction for their diagnoses
14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguín, 2 August 2024 — After two weeks of barely being able to get out of bed and an early morning receiving hydration serum in the Vladimir Ilich Lenin General University Hospital in Holguín, Isabel, 64, seems to have gotten rid of dengue, though all her medical papers indicate that she had “acute fever syndrome,” the euphemism imposed by Public Health to avoid leaving a record of the current incidence of the virus on the Island.
“My son-in-law is a doctor, and when he saw that I had bruising in the abdominal area, a high fever and an inflamed liver, he diagnosed me at home,” Isabel explains to 14ymedio. With the clinical diagnosis from a direct relative, she also followed the clinic’s recommendations: rest, a lot of liquid and stay under a mosquito net to avoid bites that would infect others.
“I didn’t go to the hospital the first few days because they were going to tell me the same thing my son-in-law had already told me. Everyone knows how deteriorated the hospitals are, and there are many people filling up the emergency rooms with symptoms like mine.” But, when she was already on her seventh day with a high fever, “I began to feel very weak and had a very swollen abdomen, so I decided to go.”
Isabel went to the Lenin hospital and found the entire emergency room “full of people with the same symptoms”
Isabel went to the Lenin hospital and found the entire emergency room “full of people with the same symptoms.” She waited for her turn despite the discomfort that prevented her from sitting or lying down. “My liver and spleen were so inflamed that I could only stand, because if I sat down it hurt a lot, but standing made me quite tired; these were very difficult hours.”
“The first thing they told me was that there were no reagents to test for dengue, so I was never going to know exactly what I had,” she recalls. “The situation was very distressing, because if something happened to me, I wanted my family to at least know why. But every time I said the word ’dengue’ the doctors and nurses spoke to me quietly and changed the conversation. It gave me the feeling that they are forbidden to say the name of that virus.”
The waiting time was lengthened because “there were few medical staff; the stretchers were all occupied, and they had to pass one of the patients over the others in line because he fainted,” she says. “The scene reminded me of what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Finally, Isabel managed to be treated by a foreign student who was doing his internship in the hospital. “He was very kind but had nothing to give me. He just told me that I was dehydrated and my situation was delicate, although not as serious as other patients he had seen. He recommended that I get a saline serum as soon as possible.”
Isabel’s family found the serum themselves and were able to hook up a drip for her through a catheter. “Between one thing and another, my daughter spent more than 5,000 Cuban pesos that night.” Before the early hours of the morning, Isabel was lying down with the serum passing through a vein in her left arm. “That saved my life.”
Next door to Isabel’s family’s house in Reparto Peralta, an 86-year-old man died after presenting very similar symptoms
In the medical certificate she had to present at work for her days of absence, and in the treatment that the doctor wrote detailing her symptoms, a phrase caught Isabel’s attention. Instead of dengue, the condition was described as “acute fever syndrome.” She asked the doctor about that and showed him the bruises on the skin of her abdomen, legs and arms. But the answer was more bureaucratic than scientific: “That’s what they have told us to put down; we can’t write ’dengue’ anywhere.”
Next door to Isabel’s family in the Reparto Peralta, an 86-year-old man died after presenting symptoms very similar to those of the 64-year-old woman. “The death certificate given to the family says that it was a cardiac arrest after an acute fever syndrome.” The inaccuracy of the diagnosis has left his family in suspense. “It could also be the Oropouche virus but they don’t tell us anything.”
A doctor who works at the Holguín Pediatric Hospital confirms the avalanche of patients with fever and symptoms associated with dengue and Oropouche. “We can’t tell parents what we think the child has. We are directed to put ’acute fever syndrome’ in all cases,” she tells this newspaper under the condition of anonymity.
The doctor believes that the order is due to two reasons: “to prevent the number of dengue cases in Cuba that are reported to international organizations from skyrocketing because that affects tourism. In addition, they [the authorities of the Ministry of Public Health] don’t want people thinking that we are in an epidemic. We can’t cause more alarm because ‘the country doesn’t want to create more anxiety in the people’ was what they told us at a meeting.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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