Jul 10, 2009
During the past week, the ringing of doorbells has not taken a break, nor have tenants. Several times a day (everyday) public health inspectors show up with their flashlights and their clipboards to review possible sources of mosquitoes, searching every inch of the homes in my Centro Habana neighborhood. Shortly after, the inspectors’ inspector comes, to verify that the first one did it right, and that he signed the form where the date of the visit and the corresponding observations appear; he also signs and makes notes. A little later, the boys of the Youth Work Army (EJT) come, that is how they do their compulsory military service, also reviewing and fumigating with a dense petroleum smoke in order to get rid of the terrible insects. Later on, the officials come to verify that your house has been sprayed. But all does not end there: when you think that nobody else will be calling at your door, the doorbell rings again, and the people from the medical health service show up, doing a “screening” to see if there is any fever, so you and everyone in your house must place under your arm a thermometer that has traveled through all the armpits in the neighborhood, because your personal testimony that you are not sick is not enough. Nor do they seem to consider that you might have had a fever half an hour before, or two hours later, or that, if you did not have a “source” yesterday, you should not have one 24 hours later, unless you engage in “sowing” mosquito nurseries in your own home. But no, it is not about reasoning, but about complying with the “higher up” guidelines.
The picture I am describing here is what everyone in my building has experienced –and all those in the surrounding homes and further out- although with different nuances. For instance, I do not allow the indiscriminate entry of strangers in my home, and, in addition to not having “sources” I do not fumigate with petroleum smoke: it’s toxic, highly damaging to your health and it only eliminates adult mosquitoes…if he happens to be at home when they fumigate. Moreover, I have allergies and suffer from migraines, and it all this weren’t enough, I have the ingrained and unusual habit of questioning everything.
That is why, at my refusal to allow the constant passage of intruders littering through my house or rummaging through my private space, confronted with my permanent blocking of the smoke –which I quit six years ago, and not just for fun- contrary to the threats I received that “they were going to apply the resolution (?) to me” and, finally, faced with my decision to disconnect the doorbell in order to avoid the persistent interruptions, two delegations were sent to me. The first, consisting of a fumigator accompanied by an official “from the party,” informed me that “there is a dengue fever epidemic with over 40 confirmed cases in Centro Habana” so she asked me politely to allow my home to be fumigated, not with smoke, but with a pressurized liquid compound, an imported product applied every three months to walls in cases when, due to health concerns, people cannot leave their homes when they are fumigated. Fine, I allowed it, they did not soil my floors or my furniture, it does not stink, and the best part is that I have no mosquitoes: small advantages of civic rebellion. I inquired then about the reasons that such a dangerous epidemic had not been officially declared in the broadcast media and the little comrade from the PCC found herself trapped in confusing gibberish: she was not programmed to answer this.
The second delegation has just visited me: a young woman who introduced herself as a doctor and another person whose function I don’t know, who, thermometer in tow, came ready to stick the vitreous artifact under my armpit due to “the epidemic”. Here, I was able to glut:
“You say you are a doctor, and can you assure me that there is a dengue fever epidemic?”
“Yes, well…there are cases of dengue fever and we have orders to take everyone’s temperature.”
“I see. But it just so happens that nobody has informed me of any epidemic, that I do not use promiscuous thermometers and that I do not take orders, so you can communicate to your superiors that nobody here has a fever and that I refuse to be treated as a basic commodity.”
“But I must comply with the guidelines.”
“Fine, what are you going to do to force me to use the thermometer?”
The doctor sighed and wrote down my name (I suppose in some blacklist, one of the many blacklists in which I might appear), and I took the opportunity to glut: “If you’re a doctor I’m sure you will be able to answer, what do you, as health personnel, demand of the authorities about the lack of environmental health in which we live? Why do you hide the endemic character that the dengue fever has taken on in the Island? Why do you wait until each summer’s arrival to apply desperate measures? Why do you shut down family doctor offices when they are supposedly needed the most and have that personnel pour out on the streets to battle it out with their thermometers? Why are they still sending doctors on “missions” when they are ever more scarce to attend to Cubans? Why is it that diseases that had been eradicated in Cuba are now returning, like dengue fever, tuberculosis and others?”She, just like the previous PCC official, was not geared on how to respond to that. Moreover, it hadn’t even been conceived that anyone would question them. It is supposed that we should limit ourselves to be eternally grateful to the official zeal in caring for our health.
So, yes, there is a dengue fever epidemic in the Cuban capital, the disease is endemic and just in one neighborhood of the most densely populated Cuban municipality there are over 40 confirmed cases. Some inspectors have told me that, in addition, there are also several dozens of influenza “A” patients hospitalized at the Institute for Tropical Medicine. I don’t know if this data is exact, or if they are trying to scare the population, but I have strong reasons to suppose it is true.
Against every principle of respect for freedom and rights, any citizen here with a fever is placed under quarantine or forced to be hospitalized. There, if he doesn’t have dengue fever, he is more likely to catch it from another sick patient, since hospitals are, in general, plagued by mosquitoes. Today, Cubans on the Island are not just seen as suffering in their own health the consequences of an irresponsible State policy that has propitiated the entry of diseases into the country but that –in addition- finds itself completely defenseless against campaigns that intend, under hypocritical propaganda of concern, behind the smoke curtain of its petroleum bazookas, the true causes of the ever more frequent epidemics in the interior of the country. Once again, the merciful silence of the authorities corrupts the health statistics of this blazing medical power.