Cuba Offers to Help U.S. Contain West Nile Virus
Fri Aug 23, 3:55 PM ET

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

SPREADING WESTWARD

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.

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.

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.