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The health and political authorities of the province of Matanzas recognized this Thursday a "complex" epidemiological scenario due to active outbreaks of hepatitis that persist in the municipalities of Matanzas and Cárdenas, directly linked to the water supply crisis and irregularities in waste collection.
The situation was analyzed in a meeting led by the top authorities of the Communist Party and the provincial government, where Dr. Andrés Lamas Acevedo, director of the Provincial Center for Hygiene, Epidemiology, and Microbiology (CPHEM), provided a mixed outlook: "fever cases are decreasing, respiratory illnesses are at a safe level, while diarrheal diseases also do not pose a problem at present."
However, hepatitis is the primary concern. The authorities confirmed an outbreak of 18 active cases in the Versalles neighborhood, in the city of Matanzas, concentrated from the Plácido pharmacy to the Yumurí River, the American district, La Cumbre, and areas near the Ernest Thaelmann school.
In Cárdenas, the municipality reports seven active cases in the La Marina neighborhood, according to the provincial health alert issued in April due to outbreaks in several municipalities of the province.
The structural background of the outbreak is the severe water crisis affecting the province. More than 300,000 inhabitants of Matanzas lack stability in their water supply, as acknowledged by the Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman.
The blackouts lasting between 30 and 48 hours—the longest in the country—are preventing the operation of water pumps, leading to a surge in informal wells: from 20 to over 40 between October 2025 and March 2026, many dug near septic tanks. The health authorities had already requested boiling and chlorinating the water since March due to the health alert.
The outbreak in Matanzas is not an isolated phenomenon. Since 2024, hepatitis A has affected several Cuban provinces: Cienfuegos has surpassed 5,000 infected, Sancti Spíritus has reported over 1,080 cases, and recently the cases in Camagüey have raised alarms with reports of between 30 and 40 positive cases daily.
As preventive measures, specialists from CPHEM announced that during May and June, the urban area will undergo larviciding, adulticidal treatments will be carried out, and the territory will soon have 25 water-based fogging machines. Additionally, four new ambulances have been assigned to the province.
Mario Sabines Lorenzo, the First Secretary of the Party in Matanzas, emphasized the need to take early measures in response to the arrival of rain and high temperatures to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes.
At the same time, he acknowledged the structural limitations of the system: he emphasized the need to "work within the current context, marked by fuel shortages, without neglecting the good treatment of patients and the quality of various services."
The meeting also highlighted other shortcomings of the provincial healthcare system: challenges in transporting healthcare workers to medical centers, the need to improve nutrition in hospitals, and the urgent requirement to ensure cleanliness within them—issues that have persisted in an area where the water crisis and power outages have been worsening the health situation for months.
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