About the large scale of homeoprophylaxis in Cuba

Cuba suffered regularly from Leptospirosis epidemic when rainfall was highest which was mainly in the last few weeks (October to December) of every year. Leptospirosis is a serious disease which mimics several other serious diseases including meningitis, pneumonitis, hepatitis, nephrititis, mastitits, myocarditis and other multi-organ failures which make diagnosing the disease extremely difficult.

Leptospirosis vaccines are not widely available and often not affordable. Another effective prevention of the diseases is chemoprophylaxis which has limited use due to the short half life of the chemical and is not practical for large groups.

The incidence of Leptospirosis reported in Cuba was mainly concentrated in three provinces which reported most of the cases with almost three times more cases than in the other provinces. One should also add that in 2007 the incidence of the disease was already much higher than the historic median from 2000-2006 due to environmental, socio-economic and climate changes.

Therefore, a homeoprophylaxis has been considered. 4 strains of the inactivated bacteria were used and independently potentized. For the final product nosoLEP 200C and 10M the potentized strains were mixed.

NosoLEP were administered by about 5000 personal of the public health system of Cuba (MPHC).

The entire population (over 1 year old) of 3 provinces in the eastern region of Cuba of about 2.4 million persons received nosoLEP. The remaining provinces with more than 8.8 Mio persons contributed to the study as a cohort.

The homeoprophylaxis began with two oral doses of nosoLEP 200c (7-9 days apart) in week 45 in 2007. Ten to twelve months later two doses of nosoLEP 10M (7-9 days apart) were given.

The results were amazing:

Two weeks after the intervention a dramatic decrease of confirmed cases was observed (falling from 38 cases in week 46 to 3-4 cases/ week for the rest of the year while the incidence in the other cohort even increased by 21.7 %.

We can conclude that the homeoprophylaxis was feasible and affordable as a large scale intervention to control an epidemic and was very effective.

The complete article can be found here.