Washington-SANA
The unjust blockade and illegal sanctions imposed by the United States on Cuba for more than six decades have deprived the entire world and Americans themselves of medical treatments and medicines developed by scientists and doctors in Cuba, according to the American Counter Punch website.
The site explained in an article prepared by writer Natalia Marcos that the medical achievements made by scientists and researchers in Cuba, such as a vaccine to combat lung cancer and treat diabetes, should be circulated to the entire world and used outside the borders of this country, which is targeted by a suffocating American blockade.
Although Cuba has developed important medical and scientific partnerships with various organizations and governments around the world, including with Mexico, Iran, Brazil and Angola, this kind of cooperation is very difficult, due to the US blockade, as confirmed by the site.
Scientists at the Molecular Immunology Center in Cuba explained during a conference held in Havana last November entitled “Building Our Future” that the blockade imposed by Washington harms the Americans themselves and deprives them of obtaining Cuban medicines and drugs developed for diseases that kill them, such as diabetes, which is widely spread among the class. Operating in the United States, it kills thousands of its members annually.
The site referred to the achievements of Cuban scientists regarding the development of a vaccine against lung cancer and an innovative treatment for diabetes developed by the Cuban Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, which is reducing diabetic foot amputations by four times.
Despite the fact that this drug has been registered in Cuba since 2006, and in several other countries as well, Americans still cannot access it, due to the sanctions imposed by decision-makers in their country against Cuba.
Diabetes is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, according to 2020 statistics, as it kills more than 100,000 Americans every year, while diabetic foot ulcers are one of the most common complications of this disease, and it can quickly develop into amputation of the lower limbs and death after a few years.
The Counter Punch website indicated that doctors in the United States annually carry out more than 73,000 lower limb amputations as a desperate measure to save diabetic patients, and the distribution of these patients varies between increase and decrease according to skin color, as diabetes spreads more widely in African-American communities. and Latinos compared to their white compatriots who have access to better medical care and food.
Regarding the medical care system in Cuba, the site explained that while most countries took strict austerity measures in the eighties and nineties of the last century, public health care expenditures in Cuba increased by 13 percent between 1990 and 1993, and the country succeeded in raising the rate of the number of its doctors to one doctor. per 202 people, which is higher than the United States, where in 2004 the rate was one doctor for every 300 people.
The site noted Cuba's pioneering achievements in the field of medical care and its leadership of the scientific development movement in the world, despite the unjust sanctions and blockade, recalling in this context that Cuban scientists developed five vaccines against the Corona virus at a time when Havana was unable to purchase vaccines developed in America or the West due to the procedures. coercive.
The site emphasized that despite Cuba's achievements in the scientific and medical fields and its defiance of the blockade, the US coercive measures seriously affect its health care sector, impeding its development and preventing it from accessing necessary materials and services, as well as depriving the world of benefiting from it.
Basma Kannon
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