Cuba Health

A member of the first U.S. delegation to visit Cuba's quarantine center for people infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus Thursday described the detention facility as "pleasant" but "frightening in its implications." The first detailed picture of what the Cuban government calls its "sanitarium" for all identified HIV carriers was painted by Ronald Bayer, associate professor at Columbia University's School of Public Health, in an interview with The Times.

In the office of Dr. Alex Carreras near downtown Havana, water drips from a patched ceiling, a window is missing glass and a broken machine for sterilizing instruments lies idle. The phone rings constantly as Carreras explains that his only nurse is out for the week. Carreras and the nurse care for 120 families in the neighborhood. Living and working in the community is essential to understanding patients' needs, he said.

A mystery epidemic of a nervous-system disease that has swept across Cuba, affecting up to 26,000 people, appears to be easing slightly, Cuban doctors said Friday. "The epidemic is showing a tendency to decrease as a whole . . . only a little, but decreasing," Dr. Raul Gomez Cabrera, director of the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in Havana, told a news conference.

For years, Cuba has been notorious for its draconian treatment of people infected with the virus that causes AIDS: The government has rounded up everyone infected with the human immunodeficiency virus and locked them in sanitariums until they developed AIDS and died. But now the Cuban government is quietly taking a less oppressive approach to preventing the disease.

In the office of Dr. Alex Carreras near downtown Havana, water drips from a patched ceiling, a window is missing glass and a broken machine for sterilizing instruments lies idle. The phone rings constantly as Carreras explains that his only nurse is out for the week. Carreras and the nurse care for 120 families in the neighborhood. Living and working in the community is essential to understanding patients' needs, he said.

Doctors in Cuba, seeking natural, local alternatives to costly medical imports, are using a surgical thread developed from the fibers of the island's native sisal plant, the official newspaper Granma reported Tuesday. Granma said the thread, produced from the plant known in Cuba as henequen , is the creation of a Cuban military doctor, Mario Gonzalez-Quevedo.

So far, doctors know what the disease is not. Health specialists from around the world agree that a mysterious nervous-system epidemic that has swept across Cuba is not caused by a virus and not by bacteria. Although the eye and limb disease has stricken about 45,000 Cubans since it appeared on the island 1 1/2 years ago, doctors say it is not contagious. It does not spread through households, boarding schools and military barracks as a contagious disease would.

Thirty-two years ago, Cuba became the first Latin American nation to make health care a right for everybody. Today Cuba still is listed among the poor nations of the world, but it is among the richest in health care services for its 10.6 million inhabitants. Despite a 30-year trade embargo by the United States, unsteady economic relations with the Soviet Union and lagging productivity by its work force, the Cuban government has never slackened its drive toward a top-flight health system.

A house-to-house vitamin distribution program has quelled an unprecedented epidemic of eye disease that sickened more than 50,000 Cubans, but the cause of the malady remains a mystery. Bjorn Thylefors, head of a World Health Organization investigation team, said in Geneva that a combination of an unknown poison and poor nutrition in Cuba apparently was to blame.

Cuba's infant mortality rate, now 13.2 per thousand, has dropped to its lowest level ever, Health Minister Julio Teja says. Teja told a meeting of the Health Workers' Union this week that the rate would be down to 10 per thousand in the next few years.

The stringent U.S. embargo against Cuba that prohibits the sale of food and severely restricts the sale of medicine has significantly increased suffering and deaths in the Caribbean nation, according to a yearlong study by medical experts for the American Assn. for World Health.

Not every tourist in Cuba is looking for Caribbean beaches, daiquiris or romance. Maria de Lourdes da Rodia came from Brazil for an operation to save her eyes. A kidney transplant brought Raquel Romero, a Chilean, to a hospital room overlooking Havana Harbor. More than 7,000 foreigners are expected to visit Cuban hospitals and clinics this year, paying a total of $25 million for health care services.

It was the largest epidemic of its kind in history. From November, 1991, through the summer of 1993, the bizarre neurological disorder struck more than 50,000 people in Cuba, frightening and mystifying the bereft island nation. Most victims became partially blind, perceived colors as gray or viewed the world as if through grease-covered glasses.

A house-to-house vitamin distribution program has quelled an unprecedented epidemic of eye disease that sickened more than 50,000 Cubans, but the cause of the malady remains a mystery. Bjorn Thylefors, head of a World Health Organization investigation team, said in Geneva that a combination of an unknown poison and poor nutrition in Cuba apparently was to blame.

So far, doctors know what the disease is not. Health specialists from around the world agree that a mysterious nervous-system epidemic that has swept across Cuba is not caused by a virus and not by bacteria. Although the eye and limb disease has stricken about 45,000 Cubans since it appeared on the island 1 1/2 years ago, doctors say it is not contagious. It does not spread through households, boarding schools and military barracks as a contagious disease would.

A mystery epidemic of a nervous-system disease that has swept across Cuba, affecting up to 26,000 people, appears to be easing slightly, Cuban doctors said Friday. "The epidemic is showing a tendency to decrease as a whole . . . only a little, but decreasing," Dr. Raul Gomez Cabrera, director of the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in Havana, told a news conference.

It was the largest epidemic of its kind in history. From November, 1991, through the summer of 1993, the bizarre neurological disorder struck more than 50,000 people in Cuba, frightening and mystifying the bereft island nation. Most victims became partially blind, perceived colors as gray or viewed the world as if through grease-covered glasses.

The stringent U.S. embargo against Cuba that prohibits the sale of food and severely restricts the sale of medicine has significantly increased suffering and deaths in the Caribbean nation, according to a yearlong study by medical experts for the American Assn. for World Health.

Doctors in Cuba, seeking natural, local alternatives to costly medical imports, are using a surgical thread developed from the fibers of the island's native sisal plant, the official newspaper Granma reported Tuesday. Granma said the thread, produced from the plant known in Cuba as henequen , is the creation of a Cuban military doctor, Mario Gonzalez-Quevedo.

Thirty-two years ago, Cuba became the first Latin American nation to make health care a right for everybody. Today Cuba still is listed among the poor nations of the world, but it is among the richest in health care services for its 10.6 million inhabitants. Despite a 30-year trade embargo by the United States, unsteady economic relations with the Soviet Union and lagging productivity by its work force, the Cuban government has never slackened its drive toward a top-flight health system.