The retired accountant went to her neighborhood health clinic one Friday last month for a scheduled blood pressure check. Doctors noticed 74-year-old Elsa Pérez Garcia’s red eyes and skin rash and immediately suspected Zika virus.
The week before, her neighbor, Rosalina Coffigny Acosta, 52, had noticed a similar rash as well as joint pain, fatigue, and swelling in her cheeks. She walked two blocks to the same clinic — run, like all health services in Cuba, by the government.
Tests determined that Pérez Garcia had Zika and that Coffigny Acosta, along with her husband and 20-year-old son, had dengue, another mosquito-borne condition. Doctors hospitalized all of them for eight days in beds surrounded by nets to keep mosquitos from biting them and spreading their illness. Meanwhile, fumigation squads sprayed their homes and their neighbors’.
