Hurricane Melissa leaves spike of sickness in its wake

Maidel Jorge, a 36-year-old farmer, sweats as he chops down a tree to collect wood for cooking: the November weather in eastern Cuba is still as hot as summer. The tree was young, so the wood is green, which means it will take longer to burn and their meal will take longer to prepare.

- Eileen Sosin Martínez

Jorge, his pregnant wife and their six-year-old son are among 300 people staying in a school turned into an evacuation centre in Grito de Yara, Granma province, some of the 3 million Cubans exposed to Hurricane Melissa, which barrelled into the country last month.

Jorge’s family haven’t had electricity for two weeks, water is limited and mosquito-borne illnesses are rampant. In the evacuation centre, 18 people are suffering from a fever. Nobody knows which it is: they just call it “the virus”.

“It was terrible,” said Jorge, describing the hurricane. “Nothing was left.” While his clapboard house survived, he lost his crops of corn, beans and sweet potato, two oxen and a 100kg pig. A single hen survived. The greatest destruction wasn’t caused by wind or rain, but by flooding.

No deaths were reported when Melissa - one of the strongest storms on record to make landfall in the Caribbean - slammed into the island as a category 3 hurricane last month. But the storm brought more than 38cm of rain to some rural areas, and the ensuing floods exacerbated conditions that were already dire for many Cubans.