Georgetown, Guyana. April 16, 2020. The impact of COVID19 can now be measured and can be evaluated in the future by the impressive number of people infected, by unacceptable mortality rates, by undisputed damage to the world economy, production, and trade as well as the employment and personal income of millions of people. It is a crisis that far exceeds the health field.
The pandemic arrives and spreads in a scenario previously characterized by overwhelming economic and social inequality between and within nations, with unprecedented migration and refugee flows; in which xenophobia and racial discrimination re-emerge; and in which the impressive advances in science and technology, particularly in health, are increasingly concentrated in the pharmaceutical business and the commercialization of medicine, instead of aiming to ensure the well-being and healthy life of majorities.
It reaches a world weighed down by patterns of production and consumption that are known to be unsustainable and incompatible with the exhaustible condition of the natural resources on which life on the planet depends on, particularly in the most industrialized countries and among the elites of developing countries.
Before having the first patient identified, there were 820 million hungry people in the world, 2.2 billion without potable water services, 4.2 billion without safely managed sanitation services, and 3 billion without basic facilities for handwashing.
This scenario is more inadmissible when it is known that, at a global level, some 618 thousand 700 million US dollars are used annually in advertising alone, together with one trillion 8 billion US dollars in military and arms spending, which are totally useless for combating the threat of COVID19, with its tens of thousands of deaths.
The virus does not discriminate between each other. It does not do so between the rich and the poor, but its devastating effects multiply to the most vulnerable, those with the lowest incomes, in the poor and underdeveloped world, in the pockets of poverty of the large industrialized cities. It is felt with a special impact where neoliberal policies and the reduction of social spending have limited the capacity of the State in public management.
It takes more victims where government budgets dedicated to public health have been cut. It causes greater economic damage where the State has few possibilities or lacks options to rescue those who lose their jobs, close their businesses and suffer the dramatic reduction or the end of their sources of personal and family income. In more developed countries, it produces more deaths among the poor, immigrants, and specifically in the United States, among African Americans and Latinos.
As an aggravating circumstance, the international community faces this global threat at a time when the planet's greatest military, economic, technological and communicational power deploys a foreign policy aimed at stoking and promoting conflicts, divisions, chauvinism and supremacist and racist positions.
At times when globally facing the pandemic requires boosting cooperation and stimulating the important role of international organizations, particularly the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the current government of the United States attacks multilateralism and seeks to disqualify the recognized leadership of the WHO. It also continues in its little intention to seize the moment to impose its domination and attack countries with whose governments it has discrepancies.
Illustrative examples are the recent and serious military threats against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the proclamation the day before yesterday, by the President of the United States, of the Pan American Day and Week from April 14 to 18, accompanied by neocolonial statements and inspired by the Monroe Doctrine against Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, in memory of the Pan American Conference, condemned 130 years ago by José Martí. Around those same days, the Playa Girón fighting took place in 1961.
Another example is the immoral and persistent attack against the Cuban effort to provide solidarity to those countries that have requested cooperation to face COVID19. Instead of dedicating themselves to promoting cooperation and stimulating a joint response, senior officials of the State Department of that country dedicate their time to issuing threatening statements against those governments that, in the face of the pandemic drama, sovereignty has chosen to request aid from Cuba .
The United States commits a crime and its officials know when, in the midst of a pandemic, attacking Cuba's international cooperation, it intends to deprive millions of people of the universal human right to health services.
The dimension of the current crisis forces us to cooperate and practice solidarity, even acknowledging political differences. The virus does not respect borders or ideologies. It threatens everyone's life and it is everyone's responsibility to face it. No country should assume that it is large, rich, or powerful enough to defend itself, in isolation and unaware of the efforts and needs of others.
It is urgent to share and offer valuable and reliable information.
Steps must be taken to coordinate the production and distribution of medical equipment, means of protection and medicines, with a sense of justice. Those countries with greater availability of resources should share with those most affected and with those least affected by the pandemic.
With this approach, we work from Cuba trying to contribute with the humble contribution of a small nation, with scarce natural wealth and subjected to a long and brutal economic blockade. We have been able to accumulate for decades of experience in the development of international cooperation in health matters, generously recognized by the World Health Organization and our partners.
In the past few weeks, we have responded to requests for cooperation without stopping to assess political coincidences or economic advantages. So far, 21 brigades of health professionals have been assigned to join the national and local effort of 20 countries, adding to or strengthening medical collaboration brigades in 60 nations, which have joined the effort to combat this disease where they were already rendering their services.
We have also shared some of the medicines produced by the island that, according to our practice, have proven the effectiveness in preventing or treating the disease. Additionally, our medical personnel have participated from Cuba and via teleconferences in consultations and debates on specific treatments for patients or particular groups in various countries.
This effort is carried out without neglecting the responsibility to protect the Cuban population, which is rigorously carried out despite the immense limitations imposed by the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States. Everyone who wants to know will find the data that supports this statement, as they are public. Anyone with a bit of decency will understand that the blockade poses extraordinary pressure to Cuba to guarantee the material supplies and equipment that support the public health system and the specific conditions to face this pandemic.
A recent example was that of an aid shipment from China that could not be moved to Cuba because the carrier claimed that the United States' economic blockade prohibited it. In front of him, high officials of the State Department have been ashamed to declare that the United States does export to Cuba both medicines and medical equipment. They are not able, however, to back up these falsehoods with a single example of some commercial transactions between the two countries.
It is known and is more than justified that the economic blockade is the main obstacle to the development of Cuba, for the prosperity of the country and for the well-being of Cubans. That harsh reality, which is solely and exclusively due to the stubborn and aggressive policy of the United States government, does not prevent us from offering our solidarity aid. We do not deny aid to anyone, not even to the country that causes us so much damage, if that were the case.
Cuba is convinced that the moment demands cooperation and solidarity. Cuba argues that an international and politically biased effort to develop and share scientific research and to exchange the experiences of various countries in preventive work, protection of the most vulnerable and practices of social behaviors, will help to shorten the duration of the pandemic and to reduce the rate of death. He firmly believes that the role and leadership of the United Nations and the World Health Organization are essential.
The viral expansion will eventually stop, faster and at less cost, if we act together.
Then there will be the economic and social crisis that has been causing its passage and whose dimensions no one is capable of predicting with certainty.
We cannot wait for that moment to unite wills in order to overcome the great problems and threats that we will find and respond to those that we dragged on before the pandemic began to claim the first lives.
If the access to technology that is usually concentrated in the most industrialized countries, including especially in the field of health, is not guaranteed for developing countries, and if they do not intend to share without advances and selfishness the advances of science and its products, the vast majority of the planet's population will be as or more exposed than today, in an increasingly interconnected world.
If the politically motivated coercive economic measures against developing countries are not eliminated and if they are not exonerated from the crippling and no-payable external debt and freed from the ruthless tutelage of international financial organizations, the illusion that there will be a better capacity to respond to economic and social inequalities cannot be trusted, that even without a pandemic, killing millions every year, without discriminating children, women or the elderly.
The threat to international peace and security is real and the constant aggressions against certain countries aggravate it.
It is very difficult to hope that the eventual end of the pandemic will lead to a fairer, safer and more decent world if the international community, represented by the governments of each country, does not rush from now to reconcile and make decisions that until now they have proven stubbornly evasive.
There will also remain uncertainty about how prepared humanity will be for the next pandemic.
It is still time to act and to mobilize the will of those who today have the responsibility to do so. If it is left for future generations, it may be too late.
Havana, April 16, 2020