Cuba says dengue outbreak caused deaths, no figures

Cuba says dengue outbreak caused deaths, no figures
Fri 27 Oct 2006 1:58 PM ET

HAVANA, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Cuba is containing an outbreak of dengue
fever that has caused a number of deaths, the Pan-American Health
Organization said this week, citing a Cuban government report that gave
no figures.

Cuba's Minister of Health Jose Ramon Balaguer informed the
Washington-based PAHO on Aug 1 that Cuba was facing an outbreak of
classic dengue in four of its 14 provinces.

An updated Health Ministry report on Oct. 13, posted on PAHO's Web site
this week, said the outbreak had spread in territorial terms, but the
number of cases was dropping.

"All cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever have taken place in the adult
population and have, in a limited number of cases, produced deaths
associated with pre-existing chronic pathologies," it said.

Cuba has not said how many people died of dengue. But the Caribbean
nation stepped up a campaign in August to eradicate the Aedes Aegypti
mosquito that transmits the virus.

Health workers have gone door-to-door spraying homes with smoke. Large
Soviet-era Antonov 2 biplanes regularly roar over roof-tops spraying
insecticide to kill the eggs.

Most people who get infected by dengue develop a fever and rash, but
recover in five days. The more virulent hemorrhagic form of the fever
kills 1 in 20 of those infected.

Cuba suffered an epidemic of hemorrhagic dengue in 1981, the first in
the Americas. That outbreak killed 158 people, two thirds of them
children, according to the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute,
which leads Cuba's fight against viral disease. Some 344,000 people
caught dengue and 10,300 developed the potentially deadly hemorrhagic
fever, the institute said.

An isolated outbreak in Santiago, Cuba's second largest city, resulted
in 3,000 cases of dengue in 1997, the institute said. In 2005, Cuba
reported 75 cases of dengue to the PAHO.

The World Health Organization estimates 50 million people are infected
each year by dengue in tropical and subtropical regions.

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