Leptospirosis, Weil's Disease in Cuba

Each year, during hurricane season, many people throughout the world face flooding, homelessness and often disease; and Cuba is no exception. When the hurricanes hit each Autumn, flooding can often contaminate drinking supplies and the bacteria found in the water can frequently lead to Weil’s disease. 

Weil’s disease is also known as Leptospirosis which regularly results in a variety of symptoms including fever, muscle aches, jaundice, headaches, abdominal pains, diarrhoea and sometimes even death.

As Cuba is still subject to heavy embargoes from the United States, they have been economically restricted to sustain themselves on miniscule budgets throughout all areas including health. With an annual problem of Weil’s disease and limited finance to provide all those potentially affected with allopathic vaccinations, the Ministry of Public Health, embarked on distributing homeopathic remedies to 2.4 million Cubans in the most affected regions of the country. This campaign comprised of administering two doses of a preventative treatment to these inhabitants.

From this mass research, it became apparent there were several key advantages to this method over conventional treatment. 

Firstly, the cost of the campaign was US $200,000 - significantly lower than the customary vaccination of US $3,000,000. 

Simultaneously, producing the homeopathic treatment was far quicker than that of a vaccine (the 5 million doses required for the project was manufactured within a week), whilst managing the distribution of the doses did not require medical assistance and hence it was more efficient when accessing affected areas.

Most importantly, however, was the success of the study in terms of recorded illnesses and deaths attributed to Weil’s disease. According to reports, there was an 80% reduction in the prevalence of Weil’s disease in the affected regions where the homeopathic remedies were distributed, with only 10 cases of the infection recorded, in comparison to the usual several thousand whilst no deaths were documented.

(Information taken from an article in 'Homeopathy In Practice', Autumn 2009, the ARH's professional magazine)