ENVIRONMENT-CUBA: Mountains of Garbage Breed Disease

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 25 2002 (IPS) - More than 1.6 million cubic metres of solid waste have been collected from the Cuban capital’s streets since a campaign was launched in January aimed at fighting the Aedes aegypti, the dengue-carrying mosquito.

The initiative has brought to light the serious environmental and sanitation problems caused by the accumulation of waste in homes, in dilapidated buildings, on the land parcels and structures abandoned by state-run enterprises, and along rivers.

“The trucks take the garbage away, and the next day you find the same mountain of debris and all kinds of waste. We are talking about a problem that has been accumulating for years,” Raúl Céspedes, a sanitation activist in Havana, told IPS.

But it would be worse, he says, to stop collecting the garbage. “In digging through the accumulated rubbish, we have found, in addition to mosquito infestations, a good quantity of rats. Dengue now comes with a possible increase in leptospirosis,” Céspedes said.

The incidence of leptospirosis, a bacterial disease transmitted by rats and affecting humans and animals, rose in Cuba from 4.9 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1990 to 9.8 per 100,000 in 1997, according to the Public Health Ministry’s 1998 statistical almanac.

Leptospirosis, like dengue in its haemorrhagic form, can be fatal, or cause serious neurological damage to those infected.

“It is a miracle that there hasn’t been an epidemic in this city in these last few years,” said Aurora Fernández, an alarmed resident in the historic older district of the capital, where municipal authorities say the most complicated situation exists as far as danger of infection.

The public health offensive, which at first targeted the Aedes aegypti, has now expanded to encompass rat eradication, acknowledged Damodar Peña, the physician in charge of the campaign for the provincial directorate of the governing Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).

Official reports state that 1.6 million cubic metres of garbage were collected from Jan 12 to Feb 17. But the state-run Cuban press pointed out last week that a great deal of waste remained on the streets.

Volunteer workers filled more than 50 trucks with rubble and solid waste from just the ruins of a restaurant that was ruined by fire in the late 1980s, reported the National Information Agency.

The garbage collection system in Havana has never been able to keep pace with the volume of waste produced, but the situation grew substantially worse with the economic crisis that began in the early 1990s.

The routes of the garbage trucks, which in some parts of the city included daily pick-ups, were greatly reduced due to the lack of fuel and of funds to obtain replacement parts for broken engines.

Furthermore, Havana residents do not have access to an established service for getting rid of the rubble left by collapsing buildings, or from construction projects, or the larger solid waste items like furniture or worn out household appliances.

The Cuban capital, with 2.2 million inhabitants, generated an average of 1,060 tons of solid waste daily in 1999, according to the calculations of environmental expert Armando Fernández, published by the local non-governmental Nature and Man Foundation.

The accumulation of garbage in Havana is the result of the “poor technical state of the collection vehicles, the lack of holding tanks, the deterioration of those that have been installed, and also to the lack of environmental education of the residents of the city,” said Fernández.

The Strategic Plan for Economic and Social Development, which Cuban officials announced in 1997, identified environmental degradation as one of the main weaknesses of the Havana metropolitan area.

Among the major challenges in that respect, according to the plan, was the need to improve the area’s hygienic-sanitation and environmental quality, in contrast to the one-time campaign to collect and dispose of waste and debris.

The PCC secretary for Havana, Esteban Lazo, last week outlined ways for municipal officials to establish conditions for maintaining ongoing efforts for sanitation beyond the conclusion of the current emergency crusade against disease-carrying mosquitoes and rats.

Among the initiatives under consideration is the creation of a solid waste collection service that could by utilised by the general population and by state-run organisations for a set price, he said.

Sources close to the clean-up campaign told IPS that, among the solutions being studied to solve the capital’s garbage problems is handing over responsibility to the island’s armed forces.

In addition to plans to improve sanitation, the battle to eradicate the dengue-carrying mosquito includes the fumigation, once a week, of each Havana home, as well as wastewater treatment, and the quarantine of those who are ill with the disease.

Two Cubans had died of dengue as of Feb 1 in an epidemic that dates to mid-2001, according to data announced by President Fidel Castro. The number of confirmed cases reaches 2,000.

The number-one objective in the strategy for fighting dengue is eliminating the mosquito to the extent possible, removing the conditions for its reproduction – particularly standing water -, thus breaking the chain of disease transmission.