WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF THE BLOCKADE ON THE HEALTH OF CHILDREN?

BY LINO ORAMAS (Granma daily staff writer)

ACCORDING to U.S. State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns, Cuba has trading partners in the world to whom it can turn for medicines and medical supplies, but it doesn't do so.

It's a problem of priorities. Burns says that the American Association for World Health (AAWH) is 100-percent mistaken in presenting a study on the devastating effects of the blockade on the health of the Cuban people. Thus the corroborative findings in a 300-page report by the multidisciplinary team headed by Dr. Peter G. Bourne, AAWH's director, who was a White House aide during Jimmy Carter's presidency, also appear to be incorrect. Information obtained from U.S. statistics, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health and international health organizations is similarly discounted.

The AAWH report is based on interviews with executives of 12 U.S. pharmaceutical companies, research undertaken in 46 Cuban public health care centers and with 15 nongovernmental and international organizations, as well as 160 further interviews with 160 health care professionals and innumerable patients and their families.

Is it feasible that so many authorized opinions, based on irrefutable figures, facts and lines of argument, can be wrong? Could it be that the Torricelli Act, and the more recent Helms-Burton legislation, the threats and the instigation of subversive activities are mere U.S. games? With wings on his feet and the unhealthy edginess of someone who knows he's in an impasse, Burns rejected the first report on the Cuban health issue from this specialized U.S. organization, founded as a nonprofit private institution that functions as the U.S. committee of the World Health Organization. It would seem that his hasty response didn't leave him time to remodel the thesis in which U.S. officials frequently find themselves, when it comes to finding arguments to defend their aggression against Cuba. It would be interesting to know if it's a pathological or, more precisely, a psychiatric problem.

However, I'm more inclined to see it as part of the package of lies the U.S. government uses as a distraction from its proposition to destroy the Cuban Revolution. It's impossible for those who - according to diverse sources - have occasioned losses amounting to over 40 billion dollars during the 35 years of an ironclad economic, financial and commercial blockade, and who have not shrunk from pressuring third countries to accede to that criminal measure, to accept one of the main conclusions of this report, recently published in Washington and now in London, given that all international agreements in the human rights context advocate the free flow of food and medicines, including in wartime. Clearly, in the U.S. government's view, human rights are more a matter of political manipulation than of the full enjoyment of life.

On this point, the AAWH emphasizes how Cuba has averted a human catastrophe due to the fact that the revolutionary government has maintained a high level of support for its health care system, in order to protect its citizens. As one example, it acknowledges that Cuba's infant mortality rate is half of the rate in Washington D.C. Therefore, could Washington acknowledge that, according to Dr. Bourne, the intensification of the blockade since 1992 has made it one of the strictest embargo regimes in the history of the United States?

Could those who fail to respect the reiterated condemnation of the blockade in the UN General Assembly recognize that its negative effect on health is particularly noticeable in children, women and senior citizens with chronic illnesses?

Who else among the mistaken authors of U.S. policies towards Cuba or their reactionary acolytes would react differently from Burns in the face of the evidence that our country has had to cut back on water chlorination, due to a lack of spare parts only produced in the United States, and that this is affecting the cities' drinking water supplies, with obvious consequences for the health of their inhabitants?

At the presentation of the lengthy and detailed study that is having so many repercussions in the U.S. scientific media, it was stated that Cuban patients have been deprived of every medication internationally patented by any U.S. manufacturer since 1980. The report also clarifies that this covers almost half of newly discovered medicines, and also relates to the predominance of major U.S. pharmaceutical companies in international mergers, a factor that is becoming steadily more generalized. Obviously, this implies that even when the funds are available, the Cubans are unable to acquire certain products.

The specialists' report includes chapters on AIDS, nephrology, oncology, cardiology, women's' health and water purification. A wealth of examples of the negative effects are presented, such as Washington's opposition to the sale of spare parts for maternity and children's hospitals or its refusal to sell a specialized piece of equipment for a cardiac patient, who subsequently died.

The concrete shortages referred to by the multidisciplinary group - which included a pediatrician and a neurosurgeon, among other internationally recognized professionals - are not limited to medicines or high technology machinery. The AAWH report cites a lack of publications and computer equipment, essential items in the practice of modern medicine. In this context, I remembered how the U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan also came up against that U.S. policy during their campaign to bring to Cuba computer equipment donated by the U.S. people.

In his irrational sally, Burns shamelessly and intentionally failed to mention that the reinforcement of the blockade since 1994 has damaged the Cuban economy in terms of lost income and forced expenditure, to the tune of one billion dollars, which is equal to half of the country's current import capacity. Moreover, he lied by quoting import figures for medicines that were some ten times lower that the real total, purchased with great effort and in spite of the U.S. blockade. According to data from the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), offered by Deputy Minister Ramon E. Diaz Vallina, hard currency expenditure in 1996 totaled 64,249,000 dollars for medical supplies alone. This includes imported medicines, pharmaceutical raw materials, packaging materials, reagents, radioactive isotopes and other pharmaceutical supplies. Although these imports do not satisfy the total demand, in many cases the blockade itself has impeded their acquisition. According to the same source, import spending on just seven product lines - insulin, cytostatic medications for cancer treatment, radioactive isotopes for diagnoses, pacemakers, surgical cotton and gauze, drip bottles and penicillin - amounted to 12,836,300 dollars, more than double the figure the U.S. State Department official attempted to project as valid for the island's total expenditure in one year.

It has to be borne in mind that some medical products bought in Europe in freely convertible currency are more than twice as expensive as those available on the U.S. market. The higher cost of air or maritime transportation is an additional factor; between 1993 and 1995, prices rose by over eight million dollars, a sum that could have been directed to more medicines and other products if Cuba had access to a market that is geographically closer, like the United States. As was to be expected, the "absent-minded" official deployed another wretched phrase from the discredited script of attacks on Cuba, when he stated that Castro and his government do not spend money for the well-being of their own citizens, but prefer to invest in an active military apparatus and in the nuclear power plant at Juragua. The baseness of such a notion is obvious and not even explicable as stupidity or ignorance. In spite of the fact that Cuba is obliged to invest resources for its own defense, spending on this concept cannot be compared with the percentage of the budget directed to the education and health of all Cubans which, at 2.755 billion pesos, is the country's second largest item of expenditure, only exceeded by running costs in the productive sphere.

These figures are no secret. They are published and correspond to the 1997 budget approved by the National Assembly during its last session. In this sea of falsehoods, with that reference to the Juragua electronuclear plant, a behind-the-times Burns ignored the fact that work on the plant has been paralyzed for several years and that the only investments in the last five years correspond to a Russian credit of 30 million dollars for conservation and maintenance work related to the installation's safety norms, which follow the International Atomic Energy Agency's guidelines.

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