Cuba throws soldiers into battle against Zika virus

President Raul Castro announced this week that he was throwing 9,000 military personnel and hundreds of police into what he called Cuba's "inadequate" fight against the mosquito that carries the virus linked to birth defects and paralysis elsewhere in Latin America.

Castro's call to action included an unusual admission of deficiencies in Cuba's vaunted free neighborhood-level health-care system, which has suffered in recent years from lack of equipment, short-staffing and low morale among poorly paid state health workers.

Gaps have been increasingly obvious in the effort to spray homes and businesses for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which has infected thousands of Cubans with the dengue virus and dozens with chikungunya, a disease that causes fever and severe joint pain.

Cubans frequently claim allergies or asthma to put off fumigation crews composed of public health workers and teenagers completing obligatory military service.

State-run television and radio featured a constant stream of educational messages about Zika, which has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly.

Medical workers were ready to move into any area where a possible Zika case is detected, quarantining and testing anyone who lives within 500 meters, said public health official Dr. Lorenzo Somarriba.