Mass check-ups, mass testing, medical internationalism, free healthcare, biotech industry investment—Cuba’s COVID-19 response can teach Duterte and the IATF a thing or two.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba has provided hope to countries reeling from the virus’ impact.
Primary healthcare, alternative medicines
Around 28,000 medical students across the country have been tasked to provide active home investigations for flu symptoms to contain the spread of the virus. These consultations would involve questions about the family’s health. Any illness such as a cough or a fever would immediately be reported to the local medical center.
The province of Santa Clara has turned to alternative medicines to boost the immune system and of the elderly, a population susceptible to the novel coronavirus. The province’s Department of the Elderly has started administering the homeopathic medicine Prevengho-VIR in Grandparents’ Homes and Elderly Homes in 13 municipalities of the province. The medicine is also targeted to prevent respiratory diseases such as dengue.
Mass testing
Cuba has applied the use of the real-time molecular biology test, also known as RT PCR and rapid test kits to its population in the fight against COVID-19.
According to National Director for Epidemiology Francisco Duran, PCR tests is to all patients between the third and seventh days of the disease, to the contacts of the confirmed cases, to those already diagnosed with severe acute respiratory infection and to those who have died from that cause.
He added that rapid tests are done to people in isolation centers, to those who arrived in the country between March 17 and 23, to those who have Acute Respiratory Infection and to the elderly who stay in nursing homes.
Between April 2 to 4, around18,849 rapid tests were done, which confirmed 15 cases.
If a rapid test comes out positive, it would be verified with another PCR test. Persons who will then get negative tests will be quarantined for up to 14 days.
Potential treatment for COVID-19
Around 45 countries have requested Cuba for supplies of the antiviral drug Interferon Alpha 2b. The drug is seen as a potential treatment for the highly contagious-COVID 19 disease as it is effective in combatting viral infections. The drug was reported to have been successfully administered to COVID-19 patients in China.
Created by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in the 1980s, Interferon Alpha 2b has been used in cases of acute respiratory syndromes and viral infections such as conjunctivitis, hepatitis B and C, shingles, and HIV/AIDS. Other notable uses of the drug are epidemics in Cuba before such as the dengue hemorrhagic fever epidemic in 1981, and an epidemic of viral conjunctivitis in the 1990s.
It has also been produced by the Cuban-Chinese company Changchun Heber Biological Technology since 2003.
Suspension of large public gatherings, but no large-scale lockdowns
Three Italian tourists became the first cases of the disease in the country on March 11. They were followed by the first Cuban to contract the disease on March 16.
Unlike other countries, Cuba has not imposed a nationwide lockdown. Cuba closed its borders resulting to a shutdown in tourism and also temporarily closed its schools.
However, it has placed communities with reported cases of local transmission under isolation and has canceled large public gatherings.
So far, isolation has affected only two communities, Veradero and Camilo Cienfuegos. Veradero was where Italian tourists who tested positive stayed while Camilo Cienfuegos had a couple who went to Veracruz, Mexico and tested positive.
Citizens in these isolated areas are given a subsidized food basket. Elderly residents have their necessities delivered to them. Clinics have been reinforced and screening for respiratory symptoms have been expanded. Communities will be placed under isolation until the outbreak has been contained, which usually takes about 15 days.
The Political Bureau of the country has also canceled the May Day parades and postponed the Congress of the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP). Proposals for other forms of May Day celebrations in accordance with current conditions were called for so that International Workers Day is not overlooked.
The Ministry of Public Health has suspended the arrival of international passenger flights and withdrew all foreign boats from Cuba on March 31. This was a response to the growing number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 inside the country.
Medical Internationalism
The country has sent around 593 health care workers to 14 countries facing the virus. Video footage of a Cuban medical brigade assigned to the hard-hit region of Lombardy in Italy became viral on the Internet when they landed on March 22 and were welcomed with applause. Other health care workers from the island nation have been assigned to 13 other countries, most of them island nations in the Caribbean.
The other 13 countries are: Andorra, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Surinam, Jamaica, Haiti, Belice, Dominica, and the island nations of Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, St Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda.
“These are times of solidarity, of understanding health as a human right, of strengthening international cooperation to face our common challenges, values that are key to the humanist practices of the Revolution and of our people,” said the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release.
These medical workers belong to the Henry Reeve Emergency Medical Contingent, created in 2005 by the late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, aimed to specialize in rapid medical response to natural disasters and outbreaks.
Cuba’s medical internationalism goes back to the first years of the Cuban revolution.
In 1960, a year after Castro took power, a team of medics to Chile after a devastating earthquake hit the country.
Cuba allowed the British MS Braemar to dock on March 18 after it was not allowed by other Caribbean ports for fear of contagion. The cruise ship had 5 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 55 other passengers in isolation after displaying flu-like symptoms.
The ship British cruise ship was turned away by other countries in the Caribbean, including the US.
Investment in free health care
Decades of investment in free health care and its biotech industry prepared its health system to respond to emergencies.
Free healthcare as a universal human right was a key tenet of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and laid the foundations to Cuba’s medical internationalism, according to Helen Yaffe, a lecturer in Economic and Social History at University of Glasgow.
Yaffe also said that, in Cuba, private interest and the process of profit-making does not interfere with public healthcare response unlike in the US or UK.
US sanctions have yet to be lifted, medical aid also blocked
The US embargo on Cuba still continues even amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Cuban government recently complained about how it prevented the shipment of masks, ventilators and testing kits to detect the coronavirus from the Chinese electronics giant Alibaba. The US shipping company who was hired to send the much-needed supplies refused at the last minute because of the arbitrary rules of the US-led embargo.
The decades-long trade embargo prevents the country from using the US dollar in international transactions. It also limits what can be imported to and exported from the island.
Many have called for US President Donald Trump to lift these sanctions, among them Cuban Americans. The UN Secretary General has also called for the lifting of sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
“I am encouraging the waiving of sanctions imposed on countries to ensure access to food, essential health supplies, and COVID-19 medical support. This is the time for solidarity not exclusion,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a letter to the G20.
Two days ago, Cuban officials said that a shipment of coronavirus aid from Asia’s richest man, Jack Ma, has been blocked by the six-decade US embargo on the island. Cuba was one of the 24 countries to receive face masks and diagnostic kits from the Jack Ma Foundation as announced on March 21. But, the cargo carrier of Colombia-based Avianca Airlines declined to carry the aid to Cuba because its major shareholder is a US.-based company subject to the trade embargo on Cuba.
The embargo supposedly exempts food and medical aid, but companies are often afraid to carry out related financing or transportation transactions because of the fines or prosecution under the embargo.
The world superpower also disparaged Cuba’s act of sending doctors to other countries.
“#Cuba offers its international medical missions to those afflicted with #COVID-19 only to make up the money it lost when countries stopped participating in the abusive program,” said the US State Department on Twitter.
The US also accused Cuba of “[keeping] most of the salary its doctors and nurses earn while serving in its international medical missions while exposing them to egregious labor conditions.”
“Host countries seeking Cuba’s help for #COVID-19 should scrutinize agreements and end labor abuses,” said the US State Department.
The US has also pushed for Cuban doctors to be sent home, following governmental swings from left-wing allies to right-wing opponents, such as Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador.
Sending doctors to other countries has been a source for hard currency for Cuba—something that the US branded as “human trafficking.”
Cuba said it pays its medical professionals enough money to cover their expenses in their host country, on top of a salary of around $50 a month paid in Cuba. The rest of the money made from the program helps ensure health and education remain free for everyone on the Caribbean island nation, the Cuban government said.
In 2018, Cuba’s biggest source of foreign exchange is from its medical services exports. This is twice as much as what it earns in its tourism industry, its second biggest export earner. It needs the money now that there the global tourism has been put to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Critics also said that Cuba’s medical internationalism would be tested with how it copes with the virus outbreak at home.
As of April 1, Cuba has had 233 confirmed cases of the disease, with 6 deaths and 13 recoveries. Around 1,140 people are under investigation while 25,000 are under monitoring by the primary care system of the country.
Still, Cuba continues to defy the US by continuing on with the aspirations of its revolution and shows an example to the world what investing in health care and education could reap for a country even besieged by the world’s biggest superpower.
