MIAMI - Cuba has become aware of the growing health scare surrounding the concerning rise of patients contracting the mosquito-borne tropical virus, Chikungunya.
Since July, 33 people have reportedly died from Chikungunya and dengue viruses in Cuba, with a disturbing 21 children among the dead, according to a report by authorities earlier this month, per CBS News.
Cuban health experts say that the Chikungunya virus emerged in the western province of Matanzas in early July and eventually spread to all of the island's 15 provinces as North America's cold winter season pushes tropical mosquito migration south into the Caribbean.
Symptoms of the Chikungunya virus are often characterized by fever and joint pain that can be debilitating but rarely fatal, unlike the flu-like dengue virus, which has claimed 12 lives, according to the island's deputy health minister, Carilda Pena.
Although dengue cases are well known to Cubans, the sudden rise of additional vector-borne diseases can be seen as a portent for what may come as the Cuban government continues to fail to come to terms with the island's jarring poverty crisis and widespread hunger.
Cuba's sanitation services are dilapidated as the island's fuel shortages remain persistent.
The island's failing economic conditions–among the worst in the Western hemisphere–may yet be compounded amid rising tensions between the United States and the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro, Cuba's main benefactor in the region, which aides the government in Havana by exporting roughly 65,000 barrels of subsidized oil per day, according to a recent report by The New York Times.
The threat of additional U.S. seizures of oil tankers in the Caribbean–a lifeline for the regime in Havana–can risk compounding the island's ills.
Officials close to the White House, however, say top officials in the administration may be eyeing Havana as a secondary target of its ongoing campaign to blockade the Venezuelan coast by any ingress and egress of sanctioned tankers into Venezuelan waters.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a long-time critic of the socialist regimes in Latin America, may be looking at the growing pressure from Washington towards the Maduro government in Caracas, of having the added benefit of also impacting authorities in Havana, thus further destabilizing the island's government, which is not ignorant of the mood of the increasing clamor for resistance from the Cuban people.
Energy blackouts and water shortages have also roiled the island's population in recent weeks.
On December 3, a major electrical blackout plunged millions of the island's residents into total darkness, an unending occurrence resulting from the country's perpetual energy outages and crumbling infrastructure.
A major blackout also hit the island in September, lasting for several days as officials blamed the government's failing infrastructure and constant fuel shortages.
Fuel shortages and electrical outages have also worsened in recent months after Hurricane Melissa slammed into the eastern portion of the island, a region that has yet to recover in the aftermath.
