Cuba Lifts Exit Visa Requirement on Foreign Travel for Residents

[m.lewin92]

Cuba’s government said it will no longer require residents to apply for exit visas to travel abroad, easing restrictions that have prevented citizens from leaving the communist island for years.Starting Jan. 14, Cubans will no longer need to obtain invitations from a resident of a foreign country in order to travel and can stay abroad for up to 24 months, according to a statement published today in state-run Granma newspaper. Currently, Cubans can lose residency and other rights including free health care after staying 11 months abroad.

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[waltky]

Cholera breaks out in Cuba...

Cholera fear in Cuba as officials keep silent
13 January 2013 - Food vendors are still out in force in the tourist heart of the Cuban capital

Uvaldo Pino was a neighbourhood barber in Cerro, one of the poorer and more overcrowded districts of Cuba's capital, Havana. In late December, the 46-year-old fell sick with vomiting and diarrhoea and died in hospital on 6 January. The barber's family say he had two separate tests and both came back positive - for cholera. "We don't know how he was infected," his sister, Yanisey Pino, told the BBC at the family's home, a few blocks from the capital's Revolution Square. "He was treated, he had all the medicine, but his organs didn't respond. It was too late." Yanisey added that her brother was a heavy drinker and had checked himself out of hospital the first time he was admitted. A week after Uvaldo's death, Cuba's health ministry has not yet made any public pronouncement. But there are increasing signs that the barber's case is not an isolated one.

'Dozens' of admissions

Doctors are now making door-to-door enquiries in Havana and anyone displaying possible cholera symptoms is being tested. Suspected cases are being sent to the Tropical Medicine Institute, the IPK. "All our wards are dealing with this issue - they are almost full," an IPK employee told the BBC by telephone, before saying she was not authorised to comment further. Another staff member, contacted later and also not authorised to speak to the media, said the IPK did not have any confirmed cases of cholera at this point. But Yanisey Pino says her brother was diagnosed with cholera both by his local hospital and the IPK. The day Uvaldo died, health workers visited the family where they live - in several cramped houses around a small yard. Relatives and neighbours were issued antibiotics as a precaution. The area has been disinfected and water samples were taken for testing. Meanwhile, nearby bars and cafeterias have been closed or instructed not to sell food or drink that is not pre-packed. Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, there are similar scenes.

One resident, Yudermis, fell sick just before the New Year, along with four other relatives including her seven-year-old son. The family assumed they had food poisoning but Yudermis says her cousin then tested positive for cholera at their local clinic. "The health workers then came here asking questions, like if we had diarrhoea," she explains inside their rundown family home as her son, now fully recovered, plays nearby. "They sent us all to hospital by ambulance and the tests came back positive. "There were a lot of people at the IPK," Yudermis adds, describing dozens of admissions while she was being treated, and not all from her own district of Cerro. "I was in a bad way. It was frightening. But we're fine now." Before she fell sick, Yudermis had never even heard of cholera, which is rare in Cuba.

Cold grills

The World Health Organisation (WHO) describes cholera as "extremely virulent". Carried by contaminated water or food, it causes severe dehydration through diarrhoea and can prove fatal if untreated. Until last summer, there had been no significant outbreak on the island since well before the revolution. But in July the health ministry confirmed that three people had died of cholera in the east of the country. A contaminated well was identified as the source. In Havana, Cuba's bustling and crowded capital and a key tourist centre, strict measures are in place to contain the latest suspected outbreak. "We can't sell anything that's not in sealed bottles until further notice and all food sales have been suspended," explains Tony, at the Cerro Moderno cafe, a short walk from the home of Yudermis. Its fridge is now empty and the grills cold.

More BBC News - Cholera fear in Cuba as officials keep silent

 

[waltky]

Second outbreak of cholera in Cuba...

Cuba struggles to contain second cholera outbreak
Thu, Jan 17, 2013 - NEPALI-HAITIAN STRAIN: The outbreak began in a working-class area of Havana, where there were several cases of acute diarrhea reported on Jan. 6

Cuba’s second cholera outbreak in four months — after 130 years without the disease — has sickened more than 50 people and killed one in Havana, authorities and the family of the deceased said on Tuesday. The latest outbreak was from the same cholera strain found to have been introduced in Haiti by Nepalese UN peacekeepers, unleashing an epidemic in 2010 that has killed about 7,900 people. Miriam Rodrmguez, who lives in the Havana neighborhood most affected by the outbreak, said her son, Ubaldo Pino, a 46-year-old barber, succumbed to the disease on Jan. 6. “He died of cholera and that is what is on his death certificate,” she said. Authorities have not officially confirmed the cause of his death.

The Health Ministry said the outbreak was detected in Havana, a city of 2.2 million people, on Jan. 6 after a surge in cases of acute diarrhea. It said 51 cholera cases had been confirmed. The Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine traced the disease back to the same strain of cholera that caused last year’s outbreak in the city of Manzanillo, 800km east of Havana in Granma Province. That outbreak, which hit in July and was declared eradicated on Aug. 28, claimed the lives of three people and infected 417. It was the first time cholera had been reported on the Caribbean island since 1882.

The cholera was “generated by a food vendor, an asymptomatic carrier of the disease, contracted earlier in other regions of the country,” the Health Ministry said. The latest outbreak first appeared in a working-class district called Cerro in the center of Havana, between the Plaza of the Revolution and the city’s main baseball stadium. Rumors of a cholera outbreak spread in recent days after doctors and nurses began going door to door in certain neighborhoods to distribute medicine. “They came to all the houses and said: ‘Are you allergic to penicillin?’ And they gave us three Doxycycline pills to take, but wouldn’t tell us anything,” a woman said. “I asked them if it was cholera, and they laughed, but didn’t tell us anything.”

The Health Ministry called on the public to pay increased attention to hygiene, urging frequent hand washing, the drinking of chlorinated water and careful cleaning and cooking of food. The outbreak comes at the height of the tourist season in Cuba, which runs from December to April, when planeloads of travelers descend on the island from Canada, Europe and Latin America. Cuban doctors have gained experience treating the disease in Haiti, which suffered a cholera epidemic that originated in the Artibonite River valley near a base for UN peacekeepers from Nepal. The outbreak in Haiti, which had never had a recorded case of cholera, has since spread to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and the US.

Cuba struggles to contain second cholera outbreak - Taipei Times