New York, 24 September 2019. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla was invited to participate today in the launching of the October issue of the MEDICC Review Journal. The issue was dedicated to Cuba's contributions to universal global health through South-South cooperation and was hosted by the Ford Foundation. The event took place one day after a High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage was held at the United Nations.
Participating in the event were Gail Reed, executive editor of the Journal; Dr. Rosie Mills of the William Hodson Community Center in the Bronx, New York; among other representatives of U.S. NGOs and institutions. On the Cuban side participated, Ambassador Ana Silvia Rodríguez Abascal, Deputy Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations; Ambassador José R. Cabañas, main Cuban representative to the United States; Carlos Fernández de Cossio, Director General of United States Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, among other diplomats from the island.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, appreciated the invitation, and reflected on how despite all the current scientific advances and the huge accumulated wealth, half of the 7,300 million inhabitants of the planet still do not have basic health services. That, he added, means that of the 60 million deaths in 2016, 54% were caused by the ten main curable diseases.
The representative of the Cuban diplomacy explained that the Cuban health system is based on the idea that access to medical care for all is a human right, and that guaranteeing such access is an obligation of all States when there is a minimum sense of social justice, something that is established in the constitution of the island.
He explained that Cuba has the guarantees offered by an honest commitment and a firm political will of the government to make available to the population all the necessary resources to achieve the remarkable health indicators that the world currently acknowledges. He added that this is achieved despite the brutal U.S. economic blockade, which does not prevent the Cuban health system from being universal and free.
For the Cuban public health system, citizens are not clients, but patients or healthy individuals whose well-being must be protected and promoted with preventive approaches, emphasized the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Rodríguez Parrilla devoted much of his statement to illustrating solidarity as an additional and defining value at the root of the Cuban health system. He stressed that the international health cooperation that Cuba has provided in the last 60 years has benefited millions of people in 164 countries, in an effort that is clearly in line with the patterns of South-South cooperation that the United Nations has been promoting since the 1970s.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations