Ray Sanchez | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
6:16 PM EDT, May 13, 2009
HAVANA - A small army of neighborhood-based doctors is being used to
track down foreign visitors at rental apartments and hotels in an
attempt to halt the spread of the swine flu virus in Cuba.
The government, which confirmed this week its first case of the H1N1 flu
virus in a Mexican medical student studying on the island, has taken a
number of measures to prevent the virus from spreading. Authorities have
stepped up vigilance at airports, ports and marinas. On April 28, the
state banned flights from Mexico, epicenter of the outbreak.
But use of Cuba's community-based family physician program -- which
claims to have a physician in nearly every neighborhood on the island --
highlights the state's organizational capacity and control at all levels
of society.
"It's insane," said Ileana, a family physician in Vedado. "Any traveler
coming from Mexico and staying in this area, we immediately get a call.
A lot of tourists rent out rooms and apartments. They call and we run
out to find them."
The doctor, who asked that her full name not be used, said her office
has been getting up to 12 calls per day from state health officials,
with the names and temporary addresses of foreigners and Cubans who live
abroad.
The names are e-mailed from airports to the local clinics nearest to
where the foreigners are staying, according to family physicians in
Havana. The clinics then direct the family doctors to carry out the
search for potential carriers of the virus.
The travelers are asked a series of questions and a cursory visual
examination is made.
"If they come from Mexico, we have to see them for 10 straight days, if
they're here that long," said Yvone, another family physician. "We go to
their homes every day for 10 days. Sometimes they leave for the beach at
Varadero and don't leave a forwarding address and we loose track of them."
On Monday, Cuba's health ministry announced that a young man became ill
during a vacation in Mexico and returned to his studies at a medical
school in Matanzas province, east of Havana. No details were given on
his current condition.
The health ministry statement said it had found 84 people from eight
countries with flu-like symptoms and that they and 511 other people who
had contact with them had been tested for swine flu. Those tested
included 14 Mexican students.
The statement said the students began arriving on April 25 -- four days
before Cuban authorities halted airline flights to and from Mexico.
The family physician program, which started in the 1980s with the goal
of providing a family doctor for every 500 residents, was long seen as a
pillar of Cuba's vaunted free health care system. But the program has
been short of staff since Cuba began sending tens of thousands of health
professionals abroad since 2000 -- mostly to Venezuela.
"We closed a lot of offices," Ileana said. "Now there is a crisis."
Army of neighborhood doctors in Cuba hunt swine flu cases -- South
Florida Sun-Sentinel.com (14 May 2009)
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-cuba-swine-flu-051309,0,7058512.story
No comments:
Post a Comment