We, the US don’t not have health care. We have insurance care.
For more than half a century, beginning with Ruby Phillips’s dispatches from Havana, the media in the West, especially the USA’s New York Times has done its best to paint Cuba as a Communist slave-state, morally reprehensible, backward; now there is some change, finally, because of the Ebola epidemic in three West African States some 4,500 miles from Cuba’s shores. Fidel was too generous in his call for forgetting the past and cooperating. Cuba has survived despite every effort by the US to destroy it.
Cuba’s achievements in medical education and care have gone unnoticed in America until now. They speak of Cuba as an “impoverished island,” yet aside from passing mention of the trade blockade, do not say why, and in fact exaggerate its impoverishment.
Allowing Miami Cubans to dictate the contrived image-making deserves the truth. In matters that truly count – education and health – the US has much to learn from Cuba. In Africa, they send soldiers, while Cuba sends doctors. That about sums up the difference between the two societies and their relationship to Africa.
“Cuba’s contribution is doubtlessly meant at least in part to bolster its beleaguered international standing. Nonetheless, it should be lauded and emulated.” The NYTimes Editorial Board.
If Cubans had not focused on the importance of medicine for virtually the entirety of their present regime, they would not at all be in the position to currently play such a role in containing the Ebola virus in West Africa. Questioning Cuba’s motives and the use of “nonetheless” reek of condescension and hostility still. Old ideological convictions do not die suddenly.
Somehow, the Editorial Board of the New York Times chooses to categorize the Cuban effort as first, a “doubtlessly” political opportunism. How then should we characterize virtually every foray of the United States on the world stage since, say, WWII? What have American motives been on African soil?
This past week’s Congressional hearing in the USA on Ebola and the CDC response was close to a pathetic farce, or more, a national embarrassment. Africans at this juncture cannot expect anything from the USA nor from any part of the West, close to the kind of response Cuba is making to the Ebola epidemic.
In fact, we in Africa struggle to think of examples of where in the world the West has been a force for good in any recollection of memory. Endless wars of choice, engineering civil wars in African States, even a coup in the Ukraine, just to provoke the other bully, Russia, wiping out grandmothers working in their gardens with drones in the name of a war on terrorism, and totally aiding and abetting African dictators of choice.
The West is a disgrace.
At least, the meagre promised response to the Ebola crisis by the US, Britain and France may now involve some commitment of resources. The same cannot be said of the world’s other most influential countries – Russia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa – whose miserly and irresponsible reaction to the epidemic belies their claims to 21st century global leadership.
More troubling is that the US continues to maintain trade with China, which is the largest Communist Nation Ever – the largest US trading partner, and even Russia, while Cuba, a tiny communist island continues to suffer from more than 50 years of US trade embargo. Alas, why?
But Cuba stands taller in all of this. It has been typical of this tiny civilization to send aid where and when it has been really needed. Recall that Cuba, within a few days of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster which affected a disproportionate number of African Americans, offered to send 1,586 physicians and 26 tons of medical supplies to New Orleans to assist in urgently needed medical care, but the offer was turned down by the Bush administration, which at the same time was pleading for help from European nations and Canada.
Venezuela also offered to send 20 mobile surgical hospitals, because that is what civilized neighbors do after disaster strikes. But of course, at the time, major US resources were wasted in the aftermath of The Charge of The Fools Brigade and the disastrous occupation of Iraq. The US administration of the appointed preparatory school cheerleader, the Vietnam dodger – Boy George – preferred to ignore both those generous offers and let, largely African Americans lives and property perish down in New Orleans.
To say that Black lives still do not matter to the West is an understatement!
In fact this Ebola crisis understates Cuba’s long history of contribution to global health that goes back to the early days of the revolution when in the 1960s, Cuba was preeminent in providing AIDS assistance in Africa. One could argue that it is the USA that has a beleaguered international standing, and could use bolstering with better cooperation against Ebola.
Many Americans are probably not aware that Cuba trains scores of Americans to become doctors at its Pan American School of Medicine, bringing young people from impoverished U.S. communities to Cuba at no charge for their educations if they are willing to commit to serving underprivileged communities.
Cuba has made choices for the evolution of its economy, choices very different from others. The Cuban government for half a century has put health care for all at the top of its list. Despite a weak economy, which is largely the fault of Western bullying.
This is what it looks like: doctors for all and doctors to spare as medical teams for the worst hit places in the world, and a government that sends those teams with full funding, promptly.
In Africa, we do not see the Cuban offer as an invasion. They are not bombers. They are not arms and ammo and trainers. They are not weapons sales. Nobody is being killed or mutilated for Africa’s diamonds and gold. They are far less expensive and dangerous than the West. And for what they commit to Africa the West could do it all for the price of a couple of its thousands and thousands of fighter bombers that serve not purpose in the world except terrorize our leaders.
The West stalls in its efforts to contain Ebola in Africa. Because African lives, or Black lives do not matter!
The US can stop pretending that the trade embargo on Cuba is great. If they wish to show the world that they are not who we Africans have now realized they are, they can begin by cooperating with Cuba. The embargo is a scam.
“Cuba is the only country that has a health care system closely linked to research and development. This is the way to go, because human health can only improve through innovation. We sincerely hope that all of the world’s inhabitants will have access to quality medical services, as they do in Cuba,” ~ Havana in July of 2014, Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).
