Everywhere you hear: “So-and-so was knocked down by a fever” or “So-and-so hasn’t been able to move her legs for a week”
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, 26 November 2025 — Just a few months ago, “chikungunya” was an unpronounceable word for most Cubans. It sounded like a distant term, one of those exotic diseases that appear on international news reports. But today, that strange term dominates conversations in the lines, on social media posts, and, worst of all, in the concerns of millions of people on the island. It has become, without question, the word of the year in Cuba.
Everywhere you hear: “So-and-so got knocked out by the fever,” “So-and-so hasn’t been able to move her legs for a week,” “The children in the building have swollen joints,” or “The neighbor can only manage to swallow gelatin.” The illness is no longer a statistic but a face, a voice, a weakness. It has the smell of homemade insecticide that families use to try to defend themselves and the sound of the insistent buzzing of mosquitoes that come in through the windows.
According to recent data, more than 50,000 Cubans were hospitalized last week with arboviral diseases, including dengue and oropouche. The extent of the problem can no longer be concealed. In provinces like Villa Clara, Camagüey, and Holguín, hospitals are at capacity, and in many municipalities, family doctors quietly admit that “this is out of control.” But while chikungunya spreads, the authorities have opted for caution. First, they downplayed the presence of the virus, then limited themselves to vague references to “local transmission.” Between one ambiguous statement and another even more confusing one, the country became increasingly filled with fever, rashes, and aching knees.
In many cities, garbage collection has ceased to be a daily task and has become a sporadic event.
The deteriorating epidemiological situation surprises no one. It is accompanied, like an inseparable shadow, by the collapse of basic services. In numerous cities, garbage collection has gone from a daily task to a sporadic occurrence. Mountains of waste rot in the sun. Adding to this visible decay are the power outages, which force people to open doors and windows to cope with the nighttime heat, precisely when the Aedes aegypti mosquito is having its feast.
Then there’s the water: it either arrives dirty, or only once a week, or with such low pressure that it forces people to store it in every container they can find. In this precarious ecosystem, breeding grounds multiply, while the old vector control program—that army of fumigators and inspectors—disappeared for years. The sound of fumigation wasn’t heard until just a few days ago, when the health crisis forced the reactivation of a tiny fraction of that massive campaign.
The streets know more than official bulletins. They know about the elderly man who spent ten days with a fever, unable to be admitted because there were “no beds” available. They know about the mother who, faced with the lack of state-provided insecticide, paid a private company 1,200 pesos for fumigation—a quarter of her monthly salary. They know about the young man who, despite his physical strength, shudders in pain, as if each bone had been replaced by a piece of rusted metal. And they know about the accounts that spread out from overflowing funeral homes, always faster than the official press, always more honest than any part of the Ministry of Public Health.
That is why, when someone says “chikungunya,” no one asks what it means anymore. It means a country that can barely move and is at the mercy of the mosquito. A word that was unspeakable yesterday has become commonplace today. A word that, unfortunately, sums up better than any other 2025 in Cuba .
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