A Cuban identified as Yasmila Otero Heredia posted a video on Facebook this Monday showing the method she uses to combat the mosquito infestation that has her sleepless: a can with cardboard and pieces of lit candle to generate smoke and drive away the insects.
"Do you see what this is? We've gone back to primitive times, look. This is to scare away the mosquitoes that won't let us live. A can with cardboard and pieces of candle," Yasmila says in the 50-second clip.
The woman reports that they have been unable to sleep for seven consecutive nights due to the plague, and that the recent rain worsened the situation by increasing the breeding grounds for insects.
"Today the mosquitoes are huge. They look like horses, not mosquitoes," she describes with desperation.
Yasmila also mentions having previously tried the egg carton method, which went viral on social media, without any results: "The other time they say that the egg carton scares them off, I’ve had them, but here you have the egg cartons standing up. I’m not selling them, why would I? People don’t even give them away anymore."
The video sums up the accumulation of crises faced by the island in a single sentence: "Here, we either die of hunger, or we die of thirst, or we die from blackouts, or we die from our lungs catching this to scare away the mosquitoes. This has no name in the days of life."
The case of Yasmila is not isolated. In June, Cuban mother Yania Delgado shared photos of her son covered in welts and bites, reporting another sleepless night while the child was undergoing treatment with benadryl and prednisone.
The proliferation of mosquitoes and gnats is attributed to a combination of structural factors: the power outages of up to 25 hours a day prevent the use of fans and force people to keep doors and windows open due to the heat; the accumulation of over 30,000 cubic meters of garbage daily in Havana —with more than 40% of the garbage trucks out of service— creates massive breeding sites; and the state fumigation system has collapsed due to a lack of fuel and insecticides.
In the absence of official fumigation, Cubans have resorted to increasingly precarious homemade methods. In May, a young man went viral for burning egg cartons as a repellent, a practice that experts warn lacks scientific support and can harm the respiratory tract. Even the Deputy Minister of Public Health, Carilda Peña García, recommended in October 2025 to burn citrus peels, acknowledging that "we must resort to everything."
The health crisis has serious consequences. The MINSAP warned in June about a potential new dengue epidemic due to the simultaneous circulation of all four virus serotypes, while Cuba has reported 33 confirmed deaths from dengue and chikungunya and more than 80,000 reported infections between the two diseases.
The energy crisis fueling this scenario deepened following the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, which eliminated the subsidized supply of Venezuelan oil that accounted for two-thirds of Cuba's energy imports, coupled with the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, which reduced fuel imports by 80% to 90%.
"This is beyond words in the days of life," concluded Yasmila, in a phrase that encapsulates what millions of Cubans experience each night this summer.
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