Apr
16
2020
Coronavirus response: why Cuba is such an interesting case
Authors
Research Associate, Institute of the Americas, UCL
Professor of Disasters and Health, UCL
Fifty one British members of parliament have written to Dominic Raab, the UK Foreign Secretary and acting Prime Minister to call for the US blockade of Cuba to be temporarily suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Grahame Morris MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cuba, coordinated the letter which asks the British government to make a public statement and to raise the issue directly with its counterparts in the United States’ government.
On 13th April 2020, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba has issued a diplomatic note to the Embassy of the United States in Havana rejecting a statement published in an article by Newsweek magazine on 3rd April 2020 attributed to a "high official" of the United States Department of Defence and according to whom "the United States Intelligence Community has evidence" that drugs are trafficked between Venezuela and Cuba.
Cuba is making an extraordinary effort to face this covid-19 pandemic. The country tries to save lives inside and outside its borders. Currently, all Cuban and foreign patients in Cuba suffering from the symptoms of COVID-19 are treated in hospitals, including thousands of people suspected of incubating this new coronavirus. Medical students guided by their professors are carrying out national surveys to identify the most vulnerable and high-risk people, as part of preventive medicine, a characteristic of the Cuban health system.
The CPGB-ML hails the extraordinarily humanitarian and internationalist response of the Cuban state, Communist Party and people to the scourge of the Coronavirus. Despite Cuba being only a small country whose economy has for six decades been relentlessly buffeted by US sanctions designed to starve it into submission, its generosity to the world and the effectiveness of the measures it has taken to combat the virus both at home and abroad is a tribute not only to Cuba but to socialism.