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Lift US Blockade Against Cuba, Iraq NOW! - Daily Alert - People's Health Assembly -
6 December 2000
Daily Alert - 6 December 2000
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Lift US Blockade Against Cuba, Iraq NOW!
Calls by the Cuban and
Iraqi delegations for the immediate lifting of sanctions against their countries got
strong approval from the hundreds of international delegates gathered here on the second
day of the historic People’s Health Assembly.
The Cuban experience in particular, of providing health care to its citizens despite all
the hardships of facing a hostile United States got a thundering ovation from the PHA 2000
participants. To shouts of ‘Long live Cuba’ and ‘Down with US
Imperialism’ participants at the PHA 2000 denounced the United States embargo against
this small Caribbean country which has achieved some of the best health indicators in all
of Latin America and the developing world.
“Only the justice of the Revolution, our people’s capacity to resist, Fidel
(Castro)’s leadership and the politics based in broad consensus have allowed us to be
where we are” said Ramon Collado of the Cuban delegation who testified before the PHA
2000 delegates. According to him the US blockade over the past three decades had cost his
country over 67 billion dollars till now, and the cost was increasing every year.
“If at last this absurd politics of US against Cuba would cease” he said
pointing out that Cuba’s impressive record on the health front would have been much
more if the conditions had not been so unfavourable. Other speakers at the PHA 2000 forum
on `Inequality, Poverty and Health’ also expressed admiration for the Cuban model of
focusing on primary health care and social welfare.’
“No other country has been as consistent in taking measures towards achieving the
goal of `Health for All’ as Cuba” said Halfdan Mahler, former director-general
of the World Health Organisation. “It is a country which has virtually all
requirements of primary health care” he said.
David Woodward, an economist, also cited Cuba as an example of a country which had taken
people’s welfare as a priority and not gone blindly for economic growth alone.
Salma Jabu, a delegate from the northern territories of Iraq also called for an end to UN
and US sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991 which she said had resulted in
massive destruction of infrastructure and affected health care seriously. Between 1988 and
1999 she said the infant mortality rate in Iraq had gone up by a massive 660 percent.
“The lifting of US sanctions, more democracy and greater participation within the
country are prerequisites for change in the situation of the Iraqi people” she said.
Citing the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 as an example Mr Abdur Razzak, Minister of
Water Resources, Bangladesh said that “History has taught us that whatever changes
have taken place is through people’s power”. On the issue of how millions of
people around the world were still deprived of basic health care he said that
unfortunately the Alma Ata declaration in 1978 of `Health for All’ had turned out to
be a mirage.
Boshi Mohlala, South African delegate to PHA 2000 compared the phenomenon of globalisation
to that of slavery and said that it had taken 300 years to end the slave trade because
many African chiefs had collaborated with the colonialists. Similarly in the contemporary
world he said third world leaders were collaborating with international institutions to
rob their own people of their resources.
SHAMING THE
WEST, CUBAN STYLE
—
Tom Fawthrop
Latin American countries
that once feared Havana as the launching pad of Che Guevara-inspired revolution against
the oligarchies of the region, are now welcoming large numbers of Cuban visitors
–armed with health expertise not AK47s. More than 1000 doctors from this cash
strapped Caribbean island have been dispatched on humanitarian aid missions to Central and
South America during the last two years in response to various health emergencies.
Cuba, still economically struggling against the crippling effects of the US trade embargo,
has recently astonished the international community, by setting up the world’s first
special university campus, totally dedicated to free medical scholarships for the
developing world.
At the start of the Cuban academic year last September, 3,329 Latin American and some from
Equatorial Guinea enjoyed Cuban scholarships for a six –year medical course designed
to alleviate the chronic shortage of doctors in many parts of the region.
Big contingents of students are drawn from Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Guatemala and Venezuela.
During the UN Millenium Summit in New York last month, the Cuban delegation caused a stir
by announcing that the doors of their Latin American Medical School would also be opened
to students from the poorer parts of the USA. 250 places have been set aside for
Afro-Americans, and another 250 scholarships for other minorities including Hispanic and
Indigenous Indians.
Honduras was until recently one of the few countries left that still had no relations with
Cuba. All that changed after the devastation of ‘Hurricane Mitch’in 1998, and
the humanitarian aid provided by 108 doctors from Cuba. A main street in the capital of
Tegucigalpa was even renamed ‘Cuba Solidarity Street’ in appreciation of
Havana’s role in their recovery.
Critical of short-term aid from western countries without a longer term concern for the
prevailing malnutrition and lack of access to medical care in the developing world, Cuban
President Fidel Castro, proclaimed the need to provide countries of the region with more
trained doctors, and in 1999 offered the Spanish-speaking countries of the region a brand
new medical school in Havana.
In spite of Cuba’s chronic financial weakness, its medical prowess with 66,000
doctors and abundant human resources can still challenge the US health system, and lead
the world in some fields.
The Cuban school’s recruitment philosophy requires that that students from the
wealthy countries like Brazil, Chile and the USA should come only from the poorest
regions, where ordinary people have little or no access to affordable medical
care-especially ethnic minorities.
Currently the 3329 students –first and second year come from 43 ethnic groups and 20
nations. According to Chilean student Leonardo Frotz “in Chile you need a lot of
money to study medicine. The Cubans teach moral values for the medical profession that do
not exist in my country. I want to go back to work for changes in our health system.”
In the case of the US, Afro-American congressman Bennie Thomson from Mississippi has
eagerly embraced Castro’s offer of 250 places for American blacks…with the other
250 reserved for US Hispanics and Indians. Havana has further challenged the US government
by offering to send a number of Cuban doctors to Mississippi where doctors are in short
supply.
This unprecedented offer from a poor third world country to provide free medical education
to citizens from the world’s richest nation, is an embarrassing reminder for
Washington that for all its superpower wealth, still 43 million US citizens do not enjoy
any health insurance, or have routine access to health-care. |
Getting the health message to and through the Media
Kalinga Seneviratne
Many of the discussions so
far at the PHA 2000 have focused on the issue of preventive healthcare, participatory
democracy and empowering the poor. The role of the media in this process has not figured
much in all this.
So can you blame sections of the media if they merely reproduce statements of the
ministers and some high profile speakers while covering PHA 2000?
Preventive healthcare is more about communication than provision of drugs to cure
illnesses. Empowering and participatory democracy are also about communication.
An effective media policy in the implementation of these processes would involve making
journalists in the mainstream media aware of the real factors that affect public health
and encouraging them to think, investigate and analyse issues in a broader social and
political context.
Another strategy would be to make use of the poor and the villagers themselves in the
production of media material, especially radio programmes making communication more
participatory.
Community based media, especially community radio, using the participatory communication
models could be a very powerful ally in making “Health for All” a reality.
Fatal Statistics
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More than 80 countries still have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade or
more ago.
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Inequality has been rising in many countries since the early 1980s.
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The income gap between the world’s richest fifth and its poorest fifth has more
than doubled to 74 to 1 over the past three decades.
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Sustained economic growth has not reduced unemployment in Europe at 11% for a decade
affecting 35 million.
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One person in eight in the richest countries of the world is affected by poverty, long
term unemployment, a life shorter than 60 years, an income below the poverty line or a
lack of literacy needed to cope in society.
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State provided care is suffering cutbacks.
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Public services have deteriorated markedly the result of economic stagnation, structural
adjustment programmes or dismantling of state services.
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Debt servicing for the 41 poorest countries amounted to $11.1 billion in 1996.
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Some 50 million migrants are women, 30 million in the Third World.
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AIDS is now a poor people’s epidemic with 95% of all HIV infected victims in the
Third World.
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Some 1.3 billion people do not have access to clean water.
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About 840 million are malnourished.
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One in seven children of primary school age is out of school.
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About 1.3 billion people live on incomes of less than US$1 a day.
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Mergers and acquisitions are concentrating power in megacorporations.
Transnationals dominate global markets. They account for some
$9.5 trillion in sales in 1997. US based TNCs account for more than a quarter of US GDP -
$2 trillion of $7.3 trillion. Capital is becoming more and more concentrated. (UNDP, Human Development Report 1999 www.whirledbank.org)
A Palestinian song
I will hold my world
in my palm
and throw it into
the centre of a volcano
but still I am calm
It is only one of two
either a decent life
with all those near and dear
or death with dignity
fighting the oppressor
filling his heart with fear
(translated by an Iraqi delegate)
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