Cuba advocates alliances in the face of communicable disease outbreaks
Havana, August 20 (RHC) Cuban Minister of Public Health José Ángel Portal on Monday stressed the importance of promoting alliances with WHO-PAHO to strengthen the capacity of countries to detect outbreaks of communicable diseases.
Inaugurating the 18th International Course on Dengue and Other Emerging Arboviruses, Mr Portal said that these diseases remain a current and growing challenge for health systems in the Region and around the world.
Speaking at the event, which is being held at the Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) until the 30th of this month, the Cuban minister emphasized that these diseases have a strong impact on communities with limited resources, which is why such alliances are urgent.
In his words, he called to take advantage of this space for exchange to broaden and deepen an international debate that will contribute to finding new and useful solutions to mitigate the devastating effects of communicable diseases and advance the One Health approach to face epidemics and pandemics caused by arboviruses.
Portal said that climate change, the close interaction between humans and animals, the increase in commercial activities, population movements, migrations, deforestation, human invasion of jungle areas, among other factors, have led to an increase in epidemics and pandemics in recent decades.
He stressed that Covid-19 is a defining event in the history of humanity, as it will mark a before and after for health systems, a circumstance he described as a difficult scenario that in record time forced us to learn and face it as efficiently and effectively as possible to protect the health and lives of our populations.
"And if it seemed little, between 2022 and 2024 other health emergencies arose, caused by the spread of different viruses, mostly of zoonotic origin, such as Mpox or monkeypox -declared again on August 14 as a health emergency of international importance- avian influenza, equine encephalitis and, more recently, Oropouche," he added.
The Cuban Health Minister reiterated that this reality shows "the urgent need to develop integrated responses, with an intersectoral approach within the framework of One Health and the unquestionable contribution, intervention and collaboration of teams from the human, animal and environmental health sectors, led by the political will and action of the governments of each country.
Portal stressed that this new scenario, marked in the last two years by an increase in the number of dengue cases never before described in the Americas and from which Cuba has not escaped, also poses growing challenges for the health system.
The circulation of the four serotypes has been confirmed in the region, with more than 10 million 893 547 cases between weeks 1 and 28 of this year, while week 29 exceeded 11 million, an increase of 233 percent compared to the same period in 2023. (Source: Prensa Latina)
