Meeting in Las Tunas to analize the province's epidemilogical situation.

Las Tunas plans to reduce the increase in cases of dengue fever, caused by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, with the support of the communities and organizations involved in the fight against the vector.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- In a meeting held with authorities from the health sector and political and mass organizations, chaired by the member of the Executive Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC in Spanish) in the territory, Marbelis Mir Corrales, the epidemiological situation was analyzed, which at the end of the eighth cycle achieved a focal treatment rate of 99.67 percent.

Viviana Gutiérrez Rodríguez, provincial health director, explained that "although the territory has not been declared in the transmission stage, epidemiological surveillance should not be neglected, because there is an increase in rainfall and high temperatures, an ideal environment for the proliferation of the vector.

"The serotype III of the arbovirus is circulating in our province, having identified more than a thousand Aedes foci so far this year, and the municipalities with the highest number of cases are Amancio, Colombia, Manatí, and the provincial capital."

To reduce the number of outbreaks, the University and the mass organizations in the reiterative blocks have been asked to help. Health officials also called for the creation of healthy communities. In the case of "Colombia", the municipality has established surveillance and control strategies every Monday to discuss the hygienic-epidemiological situation, and visits are made to febrile cases in the areas of greatest risk and complexity.

"All the family doctor and nurse practitioners' offices are covered, and have their 24 vector operatives," said Katiana González Aguilera, director of health in the southern territory.

Mir Corrales emphasized the need to ask each person responsible for the People's Councils to account for what is being done daily. "The Federation of Cuban Women with their duos of health brigadistas should visit the houses and say what they did because, amid limited material resources, each person doing their part can control the situation."

Yumara Acosta García, director of the Provincial Centre for Hygiene, Epidemiology, and Microbiology, explained to those present that "the most important thing now is to carry out physical and chemical controls in the community, especially in the block with the highest risk. The control of the epidemiological environment from the actions of Public Health transversalizing intersectionality in terms of this fundamental block.

"The most important role here is that of the population in sealing cisterns, cleaning patios, eliminating eggshells and coconut shells, channeling ditches, in other words, eradicating sites that are likely to become outbreaks."