HEALTH CARE IN CUBA
In spite of the embargo, medical technology developed by researchers in Cuba exceeds other third world countries and in many cases surpasses developments in the West. This development, which is rarely spoken of by the mainstream media (the mouthpiece of the US philosophical position), is extraordinary. There have been scientific breakthroughs in spite of the hardships suffered by the people on that island with a population of 10 million. The other extraordinary development has been a public health care system which is impressive for its devotion to the primary health care of its citizens.
FREE public health care is provided, and each urban neighborhood has community clinics, integrated with maternity homes offering pre- and post-natal care. The maternity homes are residences for high risk cases and also provide meals and vitamins to outpatients (to increase birth weights). No wonder Cuba has the lowest child mortality rate in the hemisphere.
There are family doctors in each neighborhood, and 98% of all children have been vaccinated against twelve major diseases including meningitis-B and hepatitis-B. The vaccines are freely provided (by Cuba's biotechnology industry) to the clinics, doctors, and hospitals. And prescriptions for drugs and antibiotics are available free from state pharmacies to anyone needing them. For illnesses which are too complex for the clinics, there are free hospitals in every city.
Even with low funding and the imposed hardships caused by the embargo and some shortages, there are new modern hospitals, e.g. Hospital Clinic Quirurgico. "Hermanos Ameijeiras" in Central Havana offers services and treatment in the fields of bacteriology, microbiology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, dermatology, neurology, oncology, pathology, and trauma, among others. They're clean, as modern as can be expected under (economic) war-like circumstances, and the technology is as current as can be developed in Cuba and in those countries who have chosen to ignore the embargo.
Some antibiotics are NOT available because they have been patented by US firms and thus fall under the restrictions of the embargo. As a result, administrators (through the Ministry of Public Health) are compelled to look to Europe, Canada, or Asia to acquire some medicines from countries willing to ignore or circumvent the embargo. Often administrators of the hospitals must surreptitiously purchase medicines. None of this has weakened Castro's position or the admiration most Cubans have for the president, and in fact it has probably had the reverse effect.
EMBARGO
Antibiotics produced under US patents cannot be exported to Cuba, AND countries which do so can be penalized, if caught. Merck provided only information to Cuba and was slapped with sanctions. The sanctions apply to technology which contains US components or is partially developed by a US firm and is also embargoed. An example of banned technology has been Toshiba equipment used to detect cardiovascular diseases and blood analysis laboratory equipment from the Swedish firm LKB. The US also forbade the Argentine supplier Medix from shipping spare parts needed by Cuban hospitals to maintain US-made dialysis machines and opthalmologic sonar equipment already in use throughout the island.
The US also prohibits sending equipment to repair US-made water treatment facilities. In 1994, the US Commerce Department denied an export license for X-Ray replacement parts costing less than $175. Even donating medicine to Cuba is prevented by the "1963 Trading With the Enemy Act" and "no vessel carrying goods to or from Cuba ... may enter a US port ... for 180 days."
The same law prohibits importing goods originating in Cuba, including medical development and innovations not available in the US, to deprive access to US dollars. Anything which may benefit Cuba is a violation of this law. For those who violate the regulations, there are penalties of up to ten years in prison and $1,000,000 in corporate and $250,000 in individual fines.
Chemotherapy drugs, largely under US patent, are practically unavailable because of the embargo. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, US sanctions were the immediate cause of an epidemic of 50,000 cases of optic and peripheral neuropathy between 1991 and 1993. END THE EMBARGO!
--Hank Roth, The Golem, <http://pnews.org>