We described the clinical and humoral development of a 7-years old boy who had hemorrhagic dengue in the dengue epidemic taken place in Santiago de Cuba in 1997. During this stage, dengue was serologically confirmed in 77 patients under 15 years of age but only one case was considered to be hemorrhagic dengue in spite of the fact that the patient had no history of this disease and that the virus had not been circulating in the country for over 15 years. The boy was under shock on the fourth day of the process, with hemoconcentration, pleural and ascitic effusions, thrombocytopenia and later a nosocomial sepsis, but he completely recovered in a period of 20 days.