Nayar
López Castellanos
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| Che’s quote on the wall reads ‘The life of a human being is worth more than all the gold of the richest man in the world’. |
In this way, the management of the pandemic contrasts substantially with the form in which it was confronted by the majority of the countries in the world, especially in the American continent. The lower index of contagion and deaths has not only been achieved by this civic consciousness and discipline, but also thanks to the epidemiological strategy.
This global pandemic
highlighted once again the achievement of the Cuban Revolution in strengthening
social rights. Generations of Cubans
exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to health: access to completely
free, best quality healthcare. This is reflected in the globally acknowledged high
public health indices. Cuba allots on an average 11 percent of its GDP towards
health, the highest proportion across the American continent. Cuba also stands out for its international policy of cooperation and solidarity in this field,
and for its significant scientific contributions in medicine. The successful
Cuban public health strategy that resulted in minimal contagion and mortality
on the island during the Covid-19 pandemic, gained global recognition in spite
of the corporate media’s information blockade. The Cuban Henry Reeve Brigades shared
these strategies in tens of countries across continents. What is the secret behind these achievements?
First, a high level
of organisation has characterised the Cuban people since the triumph of its
revolutionary process in 1959. The spirit of collective action is one of the
qualities that allows us to understand how, in a matter of hours, they could
evacuate two million people before the arrival of an extremely dangerous
hurricane. It also explains the singular ability of popular mobilisation, in
the context of the history of political, economic and military attacks led by
the United States for more than sixty years[1]. Not
only is there public infrastructure to ensure success in the completion of the urgent
and continuous work and tasks of organisation, but there also exists the
highest level of civic and political consciousness, whose essence is to give
priority to collective interests as a guarantee of individual interests. Cuba
is further distinguished by its range of mass organisations, amongst which the
organisation of neighbourhood residents organised into Committees for the
Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), which celebrate 60 years of their foundation[2], and
collectives of workers, women, youth, professionals, artists, as well as
children part of the José Martà Pioneers Organisation[3] can be
highlighted.
Under this dynamic
of social organisation, prevention is a central norm of the health policy. It
has succeeded by emphasizing the figure of the family doctor, pushed forward by
Fidel Castro in 1984. The family doctor monitors health problems in the neighbourhoods,
ensuring immediate, continuous, and advance medical attention. The next step in
more complex situations are the polyclinics and hospitals. In 2018, the island,
with a total population of about 11 and a half million, had a total of “450
polyclinics, more than 10,800 family nurses and doctors’ offices, 150
hospitals, 12 research institutes, 2,500 pharmacies, 131 maternal homes, 287
grandparents’ homes, 150 old age homes, and 13 medical science universities,
among other institutions; there were 482,308 health workers in the country:
92,084 doctors, one for every 122 inhabitants; 16,675 stomatologists, one for
every 602 inhabitants; 85,870 nursing staff, one for every 123 inhabitants; 59,846
health technologists, one for every 188 inhabitants” (Cuban Public Health Statistical
Yearbook), [4].
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| Normal life under pandemic in Havana (Photo: Rosa Angel Chediak Bello) |
In this way, the management of the pandemic contrasts substantially with the form in which it was confronted by the majority of the countries in the world, especially in the American continent. The lower index of contagion and deaths has not only been achieved by this civic consciousness and discipline, but also thanks to the epidemiological strategy. This includes a rigorous methodology to detect carriers of the virus based on a system of house-to-house visits and vigilance over health institutions. Official daily reports express this with clarity: “at the close of yesterday 26 new cases were confirmed, with a total of 5,483 cases in the country. The 26 cases diagnosed are Cubans. Of the 5,483 patients diagnosed with the disease, 572 (10.4%) remain confirmed active cases, of which 567 (99.1%) are evolving in stable condition. 122 deaths have been reported (none of the day), 2 have been evacuated, 36 have been discharged in the day, and a total of 4,787 patients have recovered (87.3%), 2 are critical and 3 are grave”[5].
Cuba has not only excelled in its response to the epidemic on the island, but also, above all, in its display of solidarity at the global level with its now famous “battalions of white coats”. The dispatch of brigades of the Henry Reeve International Contingents of medical specialists... to more than 60 countries across the world to fight the Covid-19 pandemic reaffirmed the solidarity work of Cuba since the triumph of the Revolution.
Further, Cuba has
achieved significant medical advances in prevention as well as treatment of
disease in recent years: drugs such as Itolizumab (CIGB 258), Jusvinza (anti
CD6) and the well-known Interferón alfa 2b, which was used in China in its most
serious period of the epidemic with tested positive results. Cuban President
Miguel DÃaz-Canel highlighted “the contribution of Cuban biotechnology in the
fight against Covid-19, both in the case of the antibody monoclonal Anti CD6,
of Molecular Immunology, as well as the peptide CIGB 258, of the Genetic and
Biotechnology Engineering Centre”, and affirmed that these medications have
succeeded in substantially reducing the death of grave and critical patients: “globally
80% of patients admitted in critical condition die. In Cuba, with the use of
these medicines, 80% of those who arrive in critical and grave condition are
being saved”[6].
Cuba has not only
excelled in its response to the epidemic on the island, but also, above all, in
its display of solidarity at the global level with its now famous “battalions
of white coats”. The dispatch of brigades of the Henry Reeve International
Contingents of Medical Specialists in Situations of Disaster and Grave
Epidemics to more than 60 countries across the world to fight the Covid-19
pandemic reaffirmed the solidarity work of Cuba since the triumph of the
Revolution. The Central Unit of Medical Cooperation (UCCM) under the Cuban Ministry of Public Health
formed in 1984 to coordinate international medical collaboration has 28,729 workers
at this present juncture[7].
The global
recognition of the role of Cuba in the face of Covid-19 is reflected in the
call for nomination of the Henry Reeve Brigade for the Nobel Peace Prize for
2020 from different corners of the world. It is worth remembering that the
brigade has already received many awards and recognition by international
organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the Panamerican Health
Organisation, highlighting especially the Dr. Lee Jong-Wook Award for Public
Health 2017, awarded by the WHO.
Cuba also stands out
for its tradition of solidarity in medical training, particularly open to
people of the Global South. More than 30 thousand students from more than 120
countries have studied in the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), located
in north Havana, a humanist project conceived and founded by Fidel Castro in
1999.
The case of Cuba stands
out at a global level, owing to the notorious difference between the
conceptions and practices of health and the exercise of medicine that prevails
within capitalism, and the developments on the island under socialism, with a
system of universal and free public health. The debate about vaccines against
Covid-19, as a public good or as one more commodity of the powerful
pharmaceutical industry, demonstrates the difference between the right to
health and disease as a business. The high cost of access to medical attention
and the elevated prices of several medicines and treatments in systems of
health that have been dismantled or privatised are at the root of the high
indices of mortality of curable diseases amongst the marginalised and
impoverished majorities of the global population.
The pandemic has
exposed the grave deficiencies of public health infrastructure that neoliberal
capitalism has bankrupted in order to prioritise the voracious interests of
corporate hospitals and pharmaceutical companies; this has provoked extreme
situations in which the absence of private medical insurance marks the thin
line between life and death, as unfortunately happens regularly in the United
States[8].The
European trend to recapitalise the public health system and reorient its functioning
in order to strengthen it, clearly shows the seriousness of what was
experienced in this health crisis that has shaken up the whole world, leaving
more than 30 million infected and more than a million dead so far.
There is no doubt
that Cuba, as a bulwark in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, places
structural problems at the centre of the debate to point to the need for
profound changes not only in the international economic order, but also towards
an urgency of systemic alternatives to replace a capitalism that has reached
its limits within its accelerated process of decomposition.
The collapse in
which we find ourselves immersed, the health crisis as a central axis, is an
urgent call for a radical shift in all aspects of life. Humanity must take note
of the fact that capitalism is causing irreparable processes of social and
environmental devastation, and that changes to the ecosystems, in scenarios
each time more catastrophic, will impact the survival of the human species and the
entire life of the planet.
That is why the
example of Cuba stands out. Being a country that has suffered a blockade by the
main capitalist power of the world, what it has managed to develop in the field
of medicine is remarkable; In addition, its internationalist conviction of sending
its “white coats” has broken all the barriers of the empire and its allies.
Cuba is a testament
to the fact that another world is possible, and that solidarity and cooperation
must constitute the new parameters of international relations. To build and
spread bridges for the continuation of life on the planet means a
reconfiguration of the international economic order, placing the human being at
the forefront.
___________________
Nayar López Castellanos
is a political scientist and Latin Americanist. A research professor at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), he is the author of several articles
and books on the social and political reality of Latin America and the
Caribbean.
Translation
from the original Spanish by Vasundhara Jairath
[1] For
more on this, those who can read Spanish see Cuauhtémoc Amezcua Dromundo, “Los
crÃmenes de Estados Unidos contra Cuba frente al juicio implacable de la
historia. Alegato para el Tribunal Benito Juárez”, published in Rebelión, 27 January 2005, <https://rebelion.org/los-crimenes-de-estados-unidos-contra-cuba-frente-al-juicio-implacable-de-la-historia-alegato-para-el-tribunal-benito-juarez/>
CC note: Helen Yaffe’s book We are Cuba: How a
Revolutionary People Survived a Post-Soviet Worls, published by Yale Universtiy
Press is an English language resource on this.
[2] For more on the 60th
anniversary of the Committees of the Defense of the Revolution, see: http://www.cubaminrex.cu/es/el-aniversario-60-de-los-comites-de-defensa-de-la-revolucion-es-celebrado-desde-distintas-partes
[3] The José MartÃ
Pioneers
Organisation was founded in 1961 by the Communist Youth League. In 1977 it
adopted its present name. It has a membership of more than one and a half
million children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 15. It inculcates in
them an interest in studying, a sense of collective responsibility and values
of socialism. The motto of the organisation is ‘Pioneers for Communism, We will
be like Che!’ The responsibility of the pioneers at the forefront of monitoring
the electoral processes in Cuba is known worldwide.
[4]
Marta Rojas, “El médico de la familia: los precursores”, in Granma, 24 December
2018, available at: http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2018-12-24/el-medico-de-la-familia-los-precursores-24-12-2018-19-12-33.
For more on health infrastructure in Cuba and its main
indicators, the Public Health Statistical Yearbook can be directly consulted,
here: https://files.sld.cu/bvscuba/files/2020/05/Anuario-Electr%C3%B3nico-Espa%C3%B1ol-2019-ed-2020.pdf
[5] Ministry
of Health, Cuba, “Reporte del 27 de septiembre de 2020”, available at: https://salud.msp.gob.cu/category/covid-19/
[6]
Leticia MartÃnez Hernández, “La respuesta de Cuba a la pandemia ha sido muy
digna”, Granma, 22 May 2020, Cuba, available at: http://www.granma.cu/cuba-covid-19/2020-05-22/la-respuesta-de-cuba-a-la-pandemia-ha-sido-muy-digna-22-05-2020-00-05-36
[7] For more on UCCM, see its
webpage here: http://cubacoopera.uccm.sld.cu/
[8] United States has had the highest number of deaths by Covid-19,
accounting for 211,738 deaths out of a total of 7,447,273 infected cases as of
30 September 2020. Amongst other sources, see Telesur, a latinamerican TV channel that carries the daily count
here: https://telesurtv.net/