Residents report weeks-long power outages, limited water, and severe damage to crops and livestock, intensifying poverty and hardship.

Personal stories illustrate the crisis: families losing crops and livestock yet clinging to a single hen, evacuations linked to infection, and inequities in access to cooking fuel and supplies.

Infrastructural failures—garbage piles, stagnant water, and frequent outages—hinder mosquito control efforts like fumigation and reduce access to clean water.

Melissa’s strike left millions affected and thousands displaced into evacuation centers, notably in Granma province.

Healthcare workers, including frontline professionals like Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, are overwhelmed, gathering information from small communities to relay to authorities and bearing the emotional toll of systemic strain.

Hurricane Melissa struck Cuba, damaging hundreds of clinics in the east and exacerbating strain on a health system already squeezed by sanctions, dwindling hard currency, and a downturn in tourism.

A growing cultural thread links generations to recurring hurricanes, with some families even naming babies after the storms as a traditional response.

Cuba is in the throes of a nationwide chikungunya outbreak across all 15 provinces, driven by the country’s worst economic crisis in decades and severe shortages of clean water, food, fuel, and medicine.

Authorities say the current spiraling situation is worsened by poor hygiene, garbage accumulation, and widespread water storage due to intermittent tap water, despite Cuba’s history of rapid outbreak response.

Flooding from the Cauto del Paso dam worsened living conditions by inundating homes and creating sludge-heavy environments that serve as mosquito breeding grounds.

Mosquito-borne illnesses, including chikungunya and dengue, surged after the hurricane, signaling a wide fever outbreak affecting a large share of the population.

In evacuation centers like Grito de Yara, families describe fever cases as “the virus,” relying on basic remedies and scarce medical supplies amid crowded conditions.