Cuban President Raul Castro announced that he is dispatching 9,000 soldiers to help keep the Zika virus out of Cuba, calling on the entire country to help kill the mosquito that carries the disease.  Castro said Cuba’s fight to prevent the arrival of the virus had been hampered (hinder or impede the movement or progress of) by “the inadequate technical quality” of efforts against the mosquito, insufficient work to clean up areas where the mosquito propagates and poor weather conditions.

Cuba prides itself on its system of free, neighborhood-level health care, which has included intensive efforts to limit the Aedes aegypti mosquito that also carries the tropical diseases dengue and chikungunya. Those efforts include door-to-door fumigation of homes and offices by young army recruits and civilian workers who are supposed to maintain a careful record of places they’ve fumigated (disinfect or purify (an area) with the fumes of certain chemicals).

Castro’s didn’t elaborate on his criticism of anti-mosquito efforts, but the young workers can frequently be seen marking locations as fumigated even when they encounter no one home, or the residents say they are allergic or asthmatic to the chemical fog used in the anti-mosquito effort.

The military is widely perceived as more effective and disciplined than Cuba’s civilian state workers, who earn about $25 a month on average.