By Sergio Martínez. Cuban Ambassador in Antigua and Barbuda.
In recent days, some media outlets in Antigua and Barbuda mentioned a press release from the US Embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados, whose content, as usual, is full of lies and slanderous accusations against the solidarity and humanitarian work that thousands of Cuban health professionals are currently providing in more than 50 countries around the world.
Despite being a small, developing island nation, Cuba has always been committed to its traditional mission of providing solidarity and assistance to the most vulnerable peoples, without conditions and with absolute respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of each nation. For more than six decades, approximately 605,698 Cuban healthcare workers have served in 165 countries across all continents and regions of the world. We recall the well-known and beautiful “Operation Miracle,” which restored sight and, with it, a new lease on life to people in 35 countries across the Americas and Africa: more than three million human beings who saw the light again thanks to this program; the participation of 265 Cuban professionals in the fight against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa as an example of the courage of our army of white coats, who did not hesitate to lend their support to save lives in that sister nation on the African continent. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 58 brigades of doctors, nurses, and health technicians belonging to the Henry Reeve Contingent provided their solidarity and support to more than 42 countries.
In contrast to this reality, the US government has decided to implement its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, which will affect hundreds of the organization's programs that are vital to the functioning of health systems in a large number of nations, primarily the least developed. What moral authority, then, does the US government and its less-than-honorable Embassy in Bridgetown have to refer so slanderously to Cuba's medical cooperation programs?
Today, Cuba maintains public health cooperation agreements with 57 countries, the vast majority of them in the Global South, where some 22,400 Cuban healthcare workers are employed, 54% of whom are women. The US government, and especially its Secretary of State, in its schizophrenic anti-Cuban obsession, is threatening to impose sanctions on nearly a quarter of the world's nations, including some considered US allies, for requesting Cuba's support in developing their public health programs. How is it possible to be so cruel as to threaten small developing countries with draconian punitive measures to force them to accept Washington's dictates at the expense of their people's sacred right to health? The US government and its Secretary of State seem unconcerned that their measures could deprive millions of people worldwide of the essential healthcare services currently provided by Cuban healthcare workers and those implemented through programs developed by international organizations such as the World Health Organization.
The US and its current Secretary of State may continue to implement their genocidal economic warfare measures to try to deprive the Cuban people of the most basic goods and services and significantly affect their standard of living , but they will never be able to deprive them of the humanist sentiments and values forged during these six decades of Revolution. Learn once and for all that solidarity can never be blocked, and as our dear graduates from Antigua and Barbuda at Cuban universities affirm in their letter published today in this country's press, “Viral Trumpism cannot infect the Cuban Internationalism.