14ymedio, Havana, December 26, 2023 — Cases of leptospirosis are increasing, the health authorities of Guantánamo announced on Monday, after informing the official press that this year 44 people are suspected of having contracted the disease, 12 more than those counted in 2022. So far, they acknowledged, two deaths have been reported in the municipalities of Imías and Maisí.
In addition, the municipalities with the highest incidence of leptospirosis in the province are Baracoa, Maisí, Guantánamo and Yateras, the local newspaper Venceremos reported. Mileidys Gómez, head of the Zoonosis program of the Provincial Directorate of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology, told the media that many of the people who are infected end up suffering serious symptoms because they do not immediately go to the doctor.
However, Yamilé, a 45-year-old woman from Havana interviewed by 14ymedio, says that the official is not telling the truth about the sick people. A few months ago, she says, she went to the hospital because she suspected that she had contracted the disease. “The first thing they told me was that if I had leptospirosis I would have to rest and drink a lot of water, because there were no medicines,” says Yamilé, while questioning why the authorities insist that “it is people’s fault for not going to hospitals if there is not even anything to treat them with.”
After being scared in the hospital, where they finally told me that it was not leptospirosis that I had, I decided to ’harvest’ the rats
The truth, she explains, is that “these diseases, such as leptospirosis, dengue or cholera arise from the poor hygiene of Cuban cities, where garbage piles up in any corner and rots there for days.” This, she adds, happens not only in Havana, but in any part of the country where “the same unhealthy situation exists.”
“After being scared in
