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A citizen campaign brings filters and water purification tablets to a Marianao neighbourhood
The "Agua Segura para Cuba" initiative, launched by activist Gisselle Ordóñez Milián with the Humanitarian Aid Network, began as a pilot in Zamora, where some families have gone more than six months without water from the public network.
The "Agua Segura para Cuba" campaign, backed by the Humanitarian Aid Network, raises funds abroad to buy and distribute water purification tablets, household filters and ozonation units, giving priority to the most vulnerable homes. The pilot area is the Zamora neighbourhood, in Havana's Marianao municipality.
Families there have gone more than six straight months without water from the pipes and collect rainwater to drink, cook and wash because they cannot afford a tank. Those who miss the official deliveries pay up to 2,000 pesos, about 2.17 dollars, to private tanker drivers for a 55-gallon tank.
The only stopgap local authorities sent to the neighbourhood, according to the campaign's organiser, was a water truck whose load arrived cloudy and yellowish and proved too small for more than four residential blocks.
Zamora has recorded outbreaks of environmental hepatitis and gastrointestinal illness linked to drinking untreated or contaminated water. The Public Health Ministry has acknowledged a simultaneous rise in acute diarrhoeal infections and hepatitis A in the capital and other provinces.
The problem reaches beyond the municipality. Officials have publicly called the water supply situation "serious and complex", with more than half a million people affected in Havana alone, and municipalities such as Old Havana have reported more than 30 consecutive days without piped service, with spontaneous protests, pot-banging and road blockages led mostly by mothers. Cubanet puts the number of Cubans hit by the water crisis at more than 2.6 million and reports the official announcement of works stretching to 2027.
Sources: Infobae · Diario de Cuba · Cubanet
Data updated: 2026-11-05T16:15:00.000Z