- HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba offered
on Friday to help the United States contain an outbreak of West Nile virus
because it says the disease could spread to the Caribbean and Central America
when infected birds begin migrating south in the autumn.
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- "The government of Cuba is prepared to cooperate
in any way it can with the authorities of the United States and other countries
in research and efforts to counter this new danger to the health of the
population of this hemisphere," the Cuban government said in a statement.
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- Cuba has made major advances in tropical medicine and
recently controlled an outbreak of dengue, a disease that is spread to
humans by mosquitoes, as is the West Nile virus. Cuban doctors currently
are helping fight dengue in Honduras, one of the Central American countries
hit by an outbreak of the potentially fatal disease.
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- No case of West Nile virus, which is moving across the
United States mainly through bird migration, has been detected south of
the U.S. border, in Cuba or in any other Caribbean and Latin American nation,
the statement published by the ruling Communist Party's daily Granma said.
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- Thirteen people have died in the United States this summer
of encephalitis, a brain inflammation associated with the virus, and more
than 250 cases of infection have been reported, mainly in Louisiana, Mississippi
and Texas.
-
- Mosquitoes contract the West Nile virus from infected
birds and then spread it to humans. West Nile cannot be spread from person
to person or from birds to humans.
-
- Havana and Washington have not had formal diplomatic
relations for four decades, but the two ideological enemies cooperate in
combating drug trafficking.
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- SPREADING WESTWARD
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- The virus has been reported for decades in Africa and
Asia but was unknown in the Americas until 1999, when an outbreak killed
seven people in the New York borough of Queens.
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- It has since spread westward to every state east of the
Rocky Mountains and is expected to reach most parts of the United States
in the next few years.
-
- Most people who contract the virus suffer no symptoms,
and those who do have symptoms generally have nothing more than headaches
and a flu-like illness. But the elderly, chronically ill and those with
weak immune systems can develop life-threatening encephalitis when infected.
-
- There is currently no treatment vaccine for West Nile.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for a
trial of a drug now used to treat hepatitis C virus for use against West
Nile.
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- Cuban authorities are on the alert for any signs of the
disease on the island 90 miles off the U.S. coast, and have taken steps
to observe migrant birds that might be infected.
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