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News from the Caribbean as of
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Cuba says dengue outbreak caused deaths, no figures
Saturday, October 28, 2006HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Cuba is containing an outbreak of dengue fever that has caused a number of deaths, the Pan-American Health Organisation 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 Organisation estimates 50 million people are infected each year by dengue in tropical and subtropical regions.
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