Cuba leads in global fight against COVID-19 pandemic

By Isaac Saney

Cuban Doctors head for Italy In April, 2020.

Cuba continues to receive international accolades for its singular role in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. This is illustrated by the numerous nominations of Cuba’s internationalist medical contingent – the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade against Disasters and Serious Epidemics – for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

Soberana – Cuba’s Covid-19 vaccine

By Gerardo Szalkowicz

If not for the unwritten premise of the imperialist media that anything good about Cuba is not to be reported, it would be striking that this piece of news has gone practically unnoticed: that in recent days the vaccine “Soberana 01” [“Sovereign” in English – Ed Note] began clinical trials in humans and became the first in Latin America – and in the entire so-called underdeveloped world – to advance to this second phase.

Cuba a beacon of international solidarity and medical excellence in the fight against COVID-19

International Cooperation to Help Countries Cope

Cuban medical team of 50 arrives in Suriname March 20, 2020, to assist with COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 21, 53 physicians and nurses from Cuba’s celebrated Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade of health professionals, trained in disaster medicine and infectious disease containment, arrived in Italy’s northern Lombardy region at the request of its health authorities. They will join a dozen Chinese doctors to work in a new field hospital being built in Bergamo in Italy’s hardest hit area, where over 63 per cent of the country’s deaths due to COVID-19 and 42 per cent of its active cases are concentrated, with over 1,000 patients undergoing intensive treatment. It is the sixth contingent of the specialized brigade to go abroad to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and the first sent to Europe.

Cuba’s timely assistance to British cruise ship

International Cooperation to Help Countries Cope

Shortly before dawn on March 18, the British passenger ship MS Braemar of the Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, with over 1,000 passengers and crew aboard, docked in the port of Mariel, Cuba. Since March 12, the ship had been denied permission to dock in several of its scheduled ports of call around the Caribbean or in the U.S. by authorities of those countries, due to the fact that one of its passengers and four crew members had confirmed cases of COVID-19, with a further 28 passengers and 27 crew members, including a doctor, in isolation after displaying symptoms.

The US government allocates millions of dollars to obstruct Cuban medical cooperation

Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounces and strongly condemns the United States government’s recent aggression against Cuba through a USAID program to finance projects and seek information to discredit and sabotage Cuba’s international health care cooperation in dozens of countries, benefitting millions of people. This plan joins the disgraceful pressure exerted on several governments to hamper Cuban cooperation, and previous attempts with the same purpose such as the special “parole” program meant to rob human resources trained in Cuba.

This Day. The silent sabotage Cuba will never forget

Biological warfare is a crime against humanity. On June 1, 1964, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro denounced, for the first time, the United States’ biological war against Cuba. Granma International interviewed two leading figures in the struggle against hemorrhagic dengue which had been purposefully introduce to the island republic. ALEJANDRA GARCIA

Cuban medical personnel lived very tense days during the epidemic of hemorrhagic dengue in 1981,which broke out across the country | Juventud Rebelde FILE photo

It was a nightmare. Emergency rooms were flooded with children, and then adults, with symptoms that began with what appeared to be those of a common cold, and then worsened rapidly when treated as such. Within a few day at the end of May 1981, all the country’s hospitals and polyclinics were facing the most lethal epidemic experienced since the triumph of the Revolution, and did not know how the disease had suddenly appeared, or how to stop its spread. 

Cuba-Africa collaboration: A bridge between sister nations

Cuba’s legacy of collaboration in Africa is one of the finest examples of the island’s solidarity efforts | LAURA PRADA, Granma 

Cuban collaboration in Africa | Granma

Cuba is renowned for its worldwide collaboration efforts, due among other reasons, to the readiness of Cuban doctors to go wherever they are needed, including remote areas or in response to natural disasters or epidemics.

Ebola: To Cuba, a medical crisis; to the US, an opportunity for a military campaign

By DAVE LINDORFF

How’s this for a juxtaposition on how nations respond to a global health catastrophe. Check out these two headlines from yesterday’s news:

‘Cuba sends doctors to Ebola areas’

‘U.S. to deploy 3,000 troops as Ebola crisis worsens’

Naked science: US crime against Cuba in 1981

Biological warfare is a crime against humanity. Irrefutable scientific evidence corroborating Cuba’s accusation made in 1983 that the virus of hemorrhagic dengue was introduced deliberately to the island republic.

Lab researchers IPK arbovirus delve into the study of the Cuban strains isolated during epidemics of dengue in search of new answers. | BENITEZ Leyva

The year was 1983. Cuban scientist Gustavo Kouri attended a Congress of Tropical Medicine held in Calgary, Canada, at which he offered data on the epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever that occurred in Cuba just two years earlier in 1981. It caused 158 deaths, of whom 101 were children . The attack caused an epidemic that affected 344,203 people. Total government spending devoted to deal with the epidemic amounted to 103.2 million dollars.

Study confirms that US introduced dengue fever in Cuba in 1981

Biological warfare is a crime against humanity.

Cuban medical personnel lived very tense days during the epidemic of hemorrhagic dengue in 1981,which broke out across the country | Juventud Rebelde FILE photo

According to the Cuban magazine Bohemia, the epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever that occurred in Cuba in 1981 was deliberately introduced in the country by the United States.

The bio-attack triggered an epidemic that affected 344,203 citizens, killing 158 including 101 children, and costing the government 103.2 million dollars.

Africa Called, Cuba Answered – Cuban doctor to speak on Cuba’s struggle against Ebola in West Africa in Cross-Canada Wide Tour, May 14-30

From May 14 to 30, Dr. José de Jesús Portilla García, a participant in various Cuban medical internationalist missions, will speak in several Canadian cities on Cuba’s Humanitarian Medical Mission in the West African nations of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Dr. Portilla García will raise awareness of Cuba’s extensive and unprecedented solidarity with the peoples of West Africa, which illustrates what can be achieved when self-serving interests do not direct the aid and assistance provided.

ANALYSIS: US approaches Ebola with militarism, not medical intervention

The U.S. and Cuba take wildly different approaches to many issues. On Ebola and African development, the U.S. brings militarism to the table, while par for its revolutionary course, Cuba promotes education and health care.

Africa called, Cuba answered: Campaign to support Cuban medical mission in West Africa

By ISAAC SANEY, Co-Chair and Spokesperson, Canadian Network on Cuba 

The Canadian Network On Cuba (CNC) is launching the Cuba For West Africa Campaign to raise funds to assist the ongoing Cuban medical missions in the West African nations of Guinea-Conakry, Liberia & Sierra Leone that are engaged in fighting the Ebola epidemic. The Cuban medical mission is by far the largest sent by any country. Standing side-by-side with the peoples of West Africa, 461 Cuban doctors and nurses — chosen from more than 15,000 volunteers – have gone to West Africa and joined the struggle against Ebola. Jose Luis Di Fabio, a representative of the World Health Organization, underscored that “there are more human resources from Cuba than from many, many NGOs put together.”

ALBA leaders meet with members of Cuban medical team preparing to leave for West Africa, October 20, 2014.

Time magazine’s 2014 Person of the Year: Ebola fighters

Time magazine has selected the Ebola fighters, who have fought to contain the Ebola outbreak, as its 2014 Person of the Year.  

Cuba, the first country to respond to the call for Ebola fighters now have over 400 health professional in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Cuba develops four cancer vaccines, ignored by the media

The fact that Cuba has already developed four cancer vaccines undoubtedly is big news for humanity if you bear in mind that according to the World Health Organization nearly 8 million people die from that disease every year. However, the monopoly media have completely ignored this reality.