Inside Cuba’s health brigade
When I was documenting the daily struggle for clean drinking water in Cuba (see my project Manifiesto del Agua), I learned that the health brigade is playing a crucial role in guaranteeing the right for clean drinking water on the communist tropical island. Since most Cubans do not have 24 hours of running water, they have to store still water in tanks on the roofs and patios. In the tropics this might reinforce the transmission of vector borne diseases, such as dengue, chikungunya and zika, transmitted by mosquitos. In an attempt to control the outbreaks of vector-borne diseases, Cuba has an enormous apparatus of health brigade employees, who are send daily to the streets in all towns and cities, to check the hygiene of the water in the tanks, and fumigate houses to eradicate the growth of mosquitos. In different towns and cities I joined these employees in their daily shifts, to understand this labour intense job, in a non-digitized, non-automated society.
