“Our country does not launch bombs against other people, or send thousands of planes to bomb cities. Our country does not have nuclear weapons, chemical or biological. The tens of thousands of scientists and doctors which our country has were educated to save lives. This is the pride of our doctors and our research centres. Tens of thousands of doctors have provided international service in the outermost and most inhospitable places.
“One day I said that we will never send or never make preventive and surprising attacks against any dark corner of the world but instead our country will be able to send doctors that will be needed in the darkest corners of the world. Doctors not bombs. Doctors not smart weapons.”
— Fidel Castro
In 2003, the leader of the Cuban Revolution delivered these words above as part of a wider speech outlining his vision for his country. He was speaking at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. By the end of the speech there was loud singing and continuous chants of “ “Ole, Ole, Fidel, Fidel”.
It was no surprise that Argentinians reacted that way to Castro. After all, South American countries have benefited immensely from Cuba’s one-of-a-kind mega medical programme. Over the past 50 years, it is estimated that up to 400,000 Cuban doctors have been sent abroad to over 60 countries, including the Caribbean and Latin America as well as to Africa and Asia.
Cuba’s medical transformation journey started in 1960, a year after Castro took power. Cuba sent a team of medics to Chile after a devastating earthquake hit the country. Three years later, Havana dispatched medical workers to help newly independent Algeria build its healthcare sector.
It later set up permanent medical missions in a number of countries, including South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, Qatar and others, which would pay in hard currency for them.
Cuba has developed its public healthcare system, focusing on primary care and prevention, and built an international outreach programme. The country boasts one of the highest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world, with 95,000 doctors providing care for its 11-million population.
In the 1980s, faced with several outbreaks of infectious diseases such as dengue fever and meningitis, Cuban scientists developed medicines and vaccines and supported a prevention-oriented healthcare system.
In 2020, when the novel coronavirus hit the world, Cuba deployed medical teams with thousands of personnel to as far as Italy and other parts of the world. Barbados has certainly benefited from our arrangement with Cuba. We now see hundreds of Cuban nurses here on island, since last year, helping us as we wage war on the deadly COVID-19.
Recently, Cuba created history by being the first country to produce three COVID-19 vaccines: Abdala, Soberna and Soberna 2. And while they await World Health Organisation (WHO) approval, which they may or may not get given western politics, Vietnam has purchased 10 million doses, Nicaragua will get seven million and Venezuela got a few million as well.
But even in the midst of all this, pleas are still being made for the United States to lift its 60-year-old embargo on the communist country.
On Wednesday, as we and Cubans here recognised the 45th anniversary of the Cubana aircraft bombing off the shores of Barbados in Payne’s Bay, St James, Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong again made a plea.
He said: “The application of unilateral coercive measures is a breach of international law, the United States embargo against Cuba, the imposition on the nation and people of Cuba of an economic, financial and commercial embargo is a breach of international law. It is an international law crime. It is criminal, we must single out this particular issue.
“We must mobilise not only the Caribbean, we must mobilise all the forces of decency and goodwill in this world to say that this world will not accept any nation believing that it can take international law into its own hands and impose unilateral coercive measures against any other nation and people.”
Last week, while at the United General Assembly newly-elected Prime Minister of St Lucia Philip J Pierre also insisted on an end to the embargo.
Pierre said: “St Lucia joins CARICOM and the global community in renewing calls for the United States to normalise its relations with Cuba and for the abolition of the existing embargo which only serves as a hindrance to economic growth in Cuba and an obstacle to realising full regional economic integration in the Caribbean.”
These are just two recent voices added to the decades-old chorus of leaders, diplomats and politicians worldwide who have asked America “the great” to lift the draconian measure off Cuba’s shoulders.
Ironically, as much as the US continues to ban Cuba from earnings, they too know the good being done in that country. They too see the value of the medical revolution created by Cuba.
In August 2006, the US under George W. Bush created the Cuban Medical Professional Parole programme, specifically targeting Cuban medical personnel and encouraging them to defect while working outside Cuba. From an estimated 40,000 eligible medical personnel, over 1,000 had entered. In 2017, President Obama announced the end of the programme.
This was such typical hypocrisy to want to use the expertise of the Cuban medical personnel but to not acknowledge the country otherwise.
Clearly, the US knows what the rest of the world does. The US sees what the rest of us see: a country that is investing heavily on saving and preserving life. A country that has no issues with sharing this precious human resource with the rest of the world.
How many more pleas must be made to lift the Cuban embargo before the US does what is legal, just and right by the Cuban Government and by extension its people? What more must Cuba do? What else must we do in the Caribbean? The US cannot pretend to be promoting democracy by acting tyrannically.
