More foreign visitors to Cuba contracting cholera

From Caribbean360

The fourth floor of Cuba’s Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine is now reserved for foreigners who catch the potentially fatal disease.

HAVANA, Cuba, Thursday August 29, 2013 – A recent report out of Havana stating that a total of 12 foreign tourists and 151 Cubans have come down with cholera in recent months appears to suggest growing transparency by Cuban officials who previously kept quiet about the disease in an attempt to avoid damaging the island’s $2.5 billion-a-year tourism industry, according to experts.

A bulletin issued on Friday by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Cuba had reported 163 cases of the disease in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey. PAHO pinpointed no specific time period, indicating only that those cases had taken place this year.

Included in the reported cases were a dozen persons who had travelled to the communist Caribbean island from other countries: three from Italy, two each from Germany, Spain, Chile and Venezuela and one from the Netherlands. According to PAHO, Cuba had reported six of those cases earlier this month.

Other sources, including independent journalists and visitors, have nevertheless been reporting hundreds more cases which have never been confirmed by Havana, where the state-run news media rarely uses the word “cholera,” referring instead to cases of “acute diarrheic diseases.”

Cuba-born New York high school teacher Alfredo Gómez, who contracted cholera during a family visit to Havana this summer, told the Miami Herald that at least six and up to 15 foreigners were on the hospital ward each of the six days he spent there, from August 4 to 10, receiving antibiotics and intravenous fluids for the disease, which is easily transmitted through water and can kill through dehydration.

Gómez, who left Cuba in 1997, said that he and two relatives were hit by intense diarrhoea two days after they ate together at a state-run restaurant in Havana in late July.

Doctors at the Manuel Fajardo Hospital told them they had cholera, Gómez said, and transferred him to the Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine, where the fourth floor of the hospital is reserved for foreigners who contract the disease.

That same week more than 60 Cubans were being treated in Kouri hospital wards reserved for island residents with cholera, the 49-year-old teacher said, and a nephew told him that a large number of people had been struck by the disease in the Havana suburb of Mantilla.

The treatment for foreigners at the hospital was very good and much better than the treatment for island residents, he added in the Miami Herald report. Problems were nevertheless said to have started when the foreign patients received huge bills as they were about the leave the hospital.

Gomez reportedly heard two Spaniards on the phone with their insurance companies in Madrid trying to figure out how and what to pay, and he was pressured strongly to pay his own bill with his credit cards or through his US health insurance policy.

He eventually left without paying the US$4,700 bill, arguing that the US embargo banned him from paying and that in any event the bill should be paid by the state-run restaurant where he contracted the disease.

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/cuba_news/949436.html#ixzz2dNTdgRmv

 

Close call for fishermen as giant marlin leaps into boat off Dominican Republic

From Caribbean360

A video of the freak event, which has garnered more than 400,000 YouTube views, shows the huge fish jumping aboard, decking one of the men and thrashing around.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, Wednesday August 28, 2013 – In what seemed more like one of the most outlandish scenes from “Jaws” than a freak event that marred a routine fishing expedition, a group of Florida fishermen had a narrow escape off the coast of the Dominican Republic when a 350-pound blue marlin leapt into their boat, almost impaling one of them.

A video of the event, which has already gone viral, garnering more than 400,000 views on YouTube, shows the huge fish hurling itself aboard the ironically named “Marlin Darlin,” knocking one of the men to the deck, and then thrashing around as the fishermen attempt to restrain it.

The fishermen told CNN that they had planned to release the marlin back into the water, but were unable to do so after it died due to “self-sustained” injuries. Instead, they reportedly handed it over to local fishermen.

Blue marlins are known to fight back vigorously once hooked and are among the largest, fastest fish in the ocean.

According to National Geographic, female marlins, which are larger than the males, can reach 14 feet in length and weigh nearly 2,000 pounds. The average size, however, is around 11 feet and between 200 to 400 pounds.

As blue-water fish, marlins spend most of their lives far out at sea and prefer the higher temperatures of surface waters. They usually feed on mackerel and tuna, but are known to dive deep for squid at times. They typically cut through schools of fish with their spears, returning to eat the stunned and wounded.

While blue marlins are not currently endangered, conservationists have raised concerns that they are being overfished.

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/dominican_republic_news/945610.html?utm_source=Caribbean360+Newsletters&utm_campaign=32888cf044-Vol_8_Issue_153_News8_28_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_350247989a-32888cf044-39393477#ixzz2dNDZfUqb

 

Landmark solar project begins construction in Leeward Islands

By Nilima Choudhury From RTCC

Experts have forecast the Caribbean will have installed 500MW of PV by 2016, powering 400,000 homes

The largest solar installation in the Caribbean is finally under construction in the West Indies’ Leeward Islands, after overcoming a series of  bureaucratic obstacles.

The 600kW installation is expected to span eight different buildings and various businesses, including supermarkets, which have a high refrigeration load due to the extreme temperatures in the region.

Chris Mason owner of installation company Comet Solar told RTCC: “We are on the cutting edge of progress towards the adoption of renewable energy sources in the Caribbean but progress is difficult as entrenched interests are being obstructive to the passing of favourable legislation.”

The Caribbean has some of the highest electricity rates in the world, according to market analysts at ClearSky Advisors.

Oil in the Caribbean, which comprises 30 territories, accounts for as much as 100% of electricity supply in some areas. As a result, a significant portion of export earnings, as high as 50% in some countries, is spent on oil imports.

Although less than 10MW of solar PV has been installed in the Caribbean to date, ClearSky expects nearly 500MW of PV to be installed by 2016.

Comet Solar, along with project partner and module manufacturer Canadian Solar have installations in other parts of the Caribbean, but Mason expressed concerns about the market.

He said: “This project is our largest to date, with the challenge of having a remote location, a range of building types from steel buildings to concrete roofs and a mix of British and American electrical systems and voltages.”

Pic: Caribbean Solar Company

For more on this story go to:

http://www.rtcc.org/2013/08/29/landmark-solar-project-begins-construction-in-leeward-islands/

Related story:

Cuba’s 1st solar farm a step toward renewables

By Andrea Rodriguez, From WIVB.com

CANTARRANA, Cuba (AP) — It’s like a vision of the space age, carved out of the jungle: Thousands of glassy panels surrounded by a lush canopy of green stretch as far as the eye can see, reflecting the few clouds that dot the sky on a scorching Caribbean morning.

Cuba’s first solar farm opened this spring with little fanfare and no prior announcement. It boasts 14,000 photovoltaic panels which in a stroke more than doubled the country’s capacity to harvest energy from the sun.

The project, one of seven such farms in the works, shows a possible road map to greater energy independence in cash-poor Cuba, where Communist leaders are being forced to consider renewables to help keep the lights on after four failed attempts to strike it rich with deep-water oil drilling and the death of petro-benefactor Hugo Chavez.

“For us this is the future,” said Ovel Concepcion, a director with Hidroenergia, the state-run company tasked with building the solar park 190 miles (300 kilometers) east of Havana in the central province of Cienfuegos.

“This is just like having an oil well,” he told The Associated Press on a recent tour of the facility.

Outside experts have chastised Cuba for missing an opportunity to develop alternative energy sources; just 4 percent of its electricity comes from renewables. That lags behind not only standard-setter Germany (25 percent) but also comparable, developing Caribbean nations such as the Dominican Republic (14 percent).

Located on rural land unfit for farming, the solar park at Cantarrana, which translates roughly as “where frogs sing,” is a tentative step toward redressing that oversight.

Construction began at the end of last year, about the same time that officials announced that a fourth exploratory offshore oil well drilled in 2012 was a bust and the only rig in the world that can drill in the deep waters off Cuba under U.S. embargo rules set sail with no return date.

In April, the solar farm came online and began contributing the first solar power to the island’s energy grid. Cuba already had about 9,000 panels in use, but all of them were for small-scale, isolated usage such as powering rural hamlets, schools and hospitals.

The solar farm now generates enough electricity to power 780 homes and had saved the equivalent of 145 tons of fossil fuels, or around 1,060 barrels of crude, through the end of July. Peak capacity is expected to hit 2.6 megawatts when the final panels are in place in September.

That’s just a drop in the energy bucket, of course.

Cuba gets about 92,000 barrels of highly subsidized oil per day from Venezuela to meet about half its consumption needs, according to an estimate by University of Texas energy analyst Jorge Pinon.

But hopes are high that solar can be a big winner in Cuba, which enjoys direct sunlight year-round, allowing for consistent high yields of 5 kilowatt-hours per square meter of terrain.

“The possibility of solar energy on a large scale could contribute to the island’s future energy security,” said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy who is familiar with Cuba’s efforts.

Six other solar parks will come online in the coming months in Havana and the regions of Camaguey, Guantanamo, the Isle of Youth, Santiago and Villa Clara, though Concepcion did not specify their size.

Concepcion did not say how much the Cantarrana park cost, but said the industry standard for a facility of its size is $3 million to $4 million. The government, which controls nearly all economic activity in Cuba, financed construction, and the panels were manufactured at a factory in the western province of Pinar del Rio.

Cantarrana is already saving the island around $800 a day and Concepcion said it should pay for itself after a little more than a decade into its 25-year expected lifespan.

The project is a notable change in mindset for a country that relies on imports for half its energy consumption and is vulnerable to the political ebb and flow in other countries.

After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s, a loss of Soviet subsidies plunged Cuba into a severe crisis. Blackouts sometimes darkened Havana for 12 hours at a time.

Chavez’s election in Venezuela in 1998 helped ease the crunch, but his death this March made clear that Havana can hardly depend on the tap staying open forever.

Chavez’s handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, has vowed to maintain the special relationship with Cuba. But he won election by a razor-thin margin, and the Venezuelan opposition will almost certainly cut the Cuba subsidy if it wins power.

Pinon, of the University of Texas, predicted it will be at least three to five years before serious deep-water oil drilling can resume in Cuba.

Cuba’s fuel uncertainty apparently prompted President Raul Castro to issue a decree in December creating seven working groups to chart a 15-year plan to develop alternative energy including solar, wind, biomass and others.

Cuba already has a handful of experimental wind farms and some small, isolated hydroelectric facilities, though experts say Cuba’s shallow rivers are not ideal for large-scale power generation. The island has had the most success burning biomass from sugarcane, but harvests have fallen in recent years.

According to a government report from May, the island hopes to get 10 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

“The reality is that cheap, abundant oil is over, and we have to turn toward these technologies,” said Vicente Estrada Cajigal, a specialist on regional alternative energy initiatives and the former president of Mexico’s National Association for Solar Energy. “That treasure in the Gulf (of Mexico), I have my doubts.”

Estrada Cajigal said the cost of solar panels has fallen by 80 percent in recent years, making it an ever more attractive option.

But other experts were cautious about how much photovoltaic energy can contribute to the island.

Mexican energy consultant Francisco Acosta said that the shaky Cuban economy’s intricate ties to fossil fuels are not easily undone, and the country has no choice but to continue to rely heavily on petroleum and derivatives.

Solar “is a good idea, but to a certain point. … In a country like Cuba, stable energy is that which comes from hydrocarbons,” Acosta said.

Cherni said unanswered questions remain about how Cuba will fund its alternative energy ambitions. But she said the island’s goal for 2030 seems about right, given that more-developed nations with greater resources are committing to 15 or 20 percent from renewables by 2020.

“So 10 percent is a good start,” Cherni said.

For more on this story go to:

http://www.wivb.com/news/international/cubas-1st-solar-farm-a-step-toward-renewables_37067442

 

African dust clouds worry Caribbean scientists

By Andrea Rodriguez Associated Press From abc News

Havana: Each summer, microscopic dust particles kicked up by African sandstorms blow thousands of miles (kilometers) across the Atlantic to arrive in the Caribbean, limiting airplane pilots’ visibility to just a few miles and contributing to the suffering of asthmatics trying to draw breath.

The phenomenon has been around as long as there’s been sand in the Sahara Desert. But it’s attracting ever more attention from regional scientists who say the clouds have grown, even if there’s no global consensus on the issue.

In recent days and weeks a particularly large cloud dusted eastern Caribbean islands, made for hazy skies and intense, tangerine-tinted sunsets off Havana, drifted over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and was detected as far away as Wyoming. In satellite images provided by NASA, the enormous, smoky clouds can be seen wafting westward from Africa covering hundreds of square miles. From the ground, they can bring a faint haze.

While the clouds have mostly been treated as a meteorological curiosity by TV newscasts, scientists say periodic masses of dust may have important climactic consequences, even hindering hurricane formation to some degree. NASA has been sending unmanned drones into tropical storms this year to study the phenomenon.

Experts say particulate matter found in the clouds may also be cause for health concerns, and are calling for more study to understand their potential impact.

“It is a matter of great magnitude, interest and importance for health,” said Braulio Jimenez-Velez, a specialist in molecular and environmental toxicology at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, who is researching the issue.

African dust has prompted two health alerts this year in Puerto Rico for asthma sufferers and people with allergies, and the Dominican Republic also issued a lower-level warning.

Airborne particulate matter is connected to respiratory disease worldwide, usually among people with existing problems such as asthma. Parts of the Caribbean, such as Puerto Rico, have high asthma rates. However, no direct link between African dust and higher rates of asthma or lung cancer has been established.

The phenomenon is similar to the giant dust storms that paint the skies yellow in Asian metropolises and can travel all the way to the U.S. West Coast — only the African clouds produce even more dust. A 2011 study in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics estimated that North Africa is behind more than 70 percent of global dust emissions.

Charles Darwin may have suspected as much back in 1832, when he collected the grime that caked the HMS Beagle at the Cape Verde islands.

“The dust falls in such quantities as to dirty everything on board. … It has often fallen on ships when several 100, and even more than 1,000 miles from the coast of Africa,” Darwin wrote. Analysis showed microorganisms and plant silica in his sample.

Since then, increasing human activity has changed the composition of the clouds.

Scientists say they contain trace amounts of things like metals, microorganisms, bacteria, spores, pesticides and fecal matter, though there’s no evidence that the quantities are enough to pose a threat. Joseph M. Prospero, professor emeritus of marine and atmospheric chemistry at the University of Miami, said African dust sampled in Barbados also had elevated levels of arsenic and cadmium.

“The specific impact on health is not known here or anywhere else. It has been extremely difficult to link specific particle composition to health effects,” said Prospero, lead author of a paper on the dust to be published in September by the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. “So it cannot be said what effect all this dust has, but there is reason for some concern.”

Eugenio Mojena of Cuba’s Institute of Meteorology said the particles are believed to originate in the semi-arid Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert, where farmers raise livestock and employ chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

“Today’s dust is not the same as what Darwin studied,” Mojena said. Before, “it didn’t have pesticides or herbicides.”

Some experts worry iron in the clouds may pose a threat to coral by feeding populations of algae and spores that damage it, though it’s still a subject of debate. The clouds can also complicate air traffic by reducing visibility to less than 3 miles, said Jason Dunion, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

On the flip side, the clouds may inhibit the formation of tropical cyclones in the Caribbean.

Prospero said lower rainfall in West Africa presumably causes more dust, which reduces sunlight, lowers water temperatures and cuts evaporation, all factors in cyclonic formation.

While experts disagree about the changes in the dust clouds over the decades, all agree this year’s cloud was remarkable.

Mojena said the dust arriving in Cuba has risen 10-fold in the last 30 years after severe droughts in northern Africa, though Omar Torres, a specialist in atmospheric physics at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said satellite studies since 1980 do not show increased Sahara dust emissions beyond normal seasonal variability.

Even so, “this year’s advancement all the way to Wyoming was totally unexpected,” Torres said. “I never saw anything like that in recent years.”

———

Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington and Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Havana and Danica Coto in Puerto Rico contributed.

For more on this story go to:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/african-dust-clouds-worry-caribbean-scientists-20084157