Gorry C

Language: English
References: 7
Page: 58-63
PDF size: 245.68 Kb.

Text Extraction

Meningitis, neuropathy, HIV, dengue—since the 1960s, Cuba has faced its share of epidemics. More recently, Cuban health professionals tackled domestic outbreaks of H1N1 (2009) and Zika (2016), and worked alongside colleagues from around the world to stem Ebola in West Africa; all three were categorized by WHO as public health emergencies of international concern.
In December 2019, China reported its fi rst cluster of pneumonia cases, later identifi ed as the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. In January 2020, Cuban authorities convened a multi-sector working group coordinated by the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) and Civil Defense to tailor its national epidemic control plan to confront the rapidly-spreading disease. The plan features a national reporting system and database, with standard protocols including early case detection, contact tracing and regularly-scheduled public health messaging. In late January, no fewer than six ministries, plus the National Sports and Recreation Institute, Customs, Immigration and national media outlets, came together to adapt domestic protocols and design multi-phase control and response mechanisms to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

REFERENCES

1. National Health Statistics and Medical Records Division (CU). Anuario Estadístico de Salud 2018. Havana: Ministry of Public Health (CU); 2019 [cited 2020 Apr 10]. 206 p. http://fi les.sld.cu/bvscuba/fi les/2019/04/Anuario-Electróni co-Español-2018-ed-2019-compressed.pdf. Spanish.

2. World Health Organization [Internet]. Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), 28 Feb 2020. [cited 2020 Apr 7]. Geneva: World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who.int/pu blications-detail/report-of-the-who-china-joint-mission-on-coronavirus -disease-2019-(covid-19)

3. Cuba has 13 medical universities (with 25 faculties) plus the Latin American School of Medicine, which has graduated some 30,000 MDs from over 100 countries since opening its doors in 1999, primarily low-income students who receive six-year scholarships from the Cuban government.

4. In the case of those medical schools responsible for more than one municipality (Havana has three such schools within the Medical University of Havana), work fl ow is distributed between the dean and several local municipal leaders.

5. Hernández MA. Valientes: Profe, ¿qué es lo que hay hacer? [Internet]. Havana: Cubadebate; 2020 Apr 4 [cited 2020 Apr 10]. Available at: http://www .cubadebate.cu/especiales/2020/04/04/valientes-profe-que-es-lo-que-hay -hacer/#.XpDNKa2ZO9Z. Spanish.

6. Weissenstein M. Cuba: US embargo blocks coronavirus aid shipment from Asia [Internet]. New York: APNews; 2020 Apr 3 [cited 2020 Apr 11]. Available at: https://apnews.com/2858fbaa2dd5460fa2988b888fc53748

7. Fariñas Acosta L. Ministerio de Salud: Cuba se prepara para más casos de COVID- 19, no bajar ni un milímetro la percepción de riesgo [Internet]. Havana: Cubadebate; 2020 Apr 8 [cited 2020 Apr 11]. Available at: http://www.cubadebate .cu/noticias/2020/04/08/ministro-de-salud-cuba-se-prepara-para-mas-casos -de-covid-19-no-bajar-un-milimetro-la-percepcion-de-riesgo/#anexo-1348559. Spanish.