Resumo em Inglês:

This paper presents the author’s experiences in deploying and later establishing a Cuban field hospital in response to the major earthquake that struck Chile in February 2010. It also reveals the initial difficulties the medical team faced and how collaboration with local social, medical and military partners contributed to response efficiency, and highlights the importance of Cuba’s international health cooperation, especially in emergency situations. Over 254 days, Cuban health professionals had 50,048 patient encounters (outpatient visits and hospitalizations), a daily average of 197. They performed 1778 surgeries (1427 major, 80.2% of total) and accumulated valuable experience in managing a field hospital in a disaster situation.

Resumo em Inglês:

Over 700,000 cases of cholera were reported in Haiti between October 2010 and February 2015. In November 2011, the Cuban Medical Team serving in Haiti established a laboratory-supported sentinel surveillance system for cholera in 10 public hospitals (one in each of Haiti’s 10 departments), to estimate the proportion of hospitalized patients with cholera and detect emergence of new Vibrio cholerae serotypes. Each month, the first ten stool samples collected from patients admitted with acute watery diarrhea were studied in all hospitals involved. Surveillance system findings from November 1, 2011, to October 30, 2012 showed that acute watery diarrhea was caused by V. cholerae serogroup O1 in 45.9% (210/458) of patients: Serotype Ogawa was found in 98.6% of this isolates (207/210) and serotype Inaba in 1.4% (3/210), indicating low circulation level of the latter in Haiti. Continuing laboratory sentinel surveillance of V. cholerae is needed to monitor the spread of the disease and prevent and contain outbreaks, particularly of new serotypes. It is important to ensure that these findings are systematically integrated with data available to MSPP from other surveillance sources.