Cuba Adopts Measures to Prevent Zika and Other Diseases

HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 3 (acn) The Public Health Ministry informed that Cuba adopts measures to prevent the introduction of the Zika virus disease, which, according to reports by the World Health Organization (WHO,) currently affects about twenty countries.

A note published on Tuesday by the Ministry's Infomed Web site clarifies that if a person arrives in the country with the disease, actions will be immediately taken in order to prevent transmission.
This virus is transmitted by the bite of the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which are present in several regions of the country. Therefore, the most important measure to prevent transmission of Zika, Chikungunya and Dengue is the elimination of the vector.
The message urges the population to eradicate all breeding grounds of these transmitters, characterized by striped legs.
So far there no cases with clinical symptoms of Zika have been detected, although all non-specific febrile syndromes are monitored and studied in order to identify early the presence of these diseases, the agency refers.
The previous year dengue transmission occurred in some provinces and 28 imported cases of chikungunya were diagnosed, and so far in 2016 no cases of the latter have been diagnosed, reads the message.
On Monday, the WHO declared the Zika virus as a global health emergency, because the mosquito-transmitted infection has been linked to neurological diseases in newborn infants.
With this measure, the United Nations hopes to contain the spread of the virus, which has been linked to thousands of cases of microcephaly in Brazil; it is associated with the so-called Guillain-Barré syndrome, and keeps some twenty nations in Latin America on the alert, Cubadebate reports.