By Tim Anderson | American Herald Tribune | April 26, 2020
On 19 March two cruise ships with COVID19 infected passengers and crew were evacuated, one in Havana and the other in Sydney. The first evacuation, of the Braemar, was so successful and uneventful that it barely raised a ripple in the world media. The second, of the Ruby Princess, led to at least 21 deaths, 700 infections and a criminal investigation.
While Bernie Sanders paid a political price for uttering something positive about Cuba’s literacy program, the current pandemic has shown the whole world the heroic side of Cuba’s health care system.
Human Rights Watch está orgullosamente asumiendo el crédito por sanciones devastadoras contra Nicaragua, mientras busca escalar la guerra económica en…
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After decades of being spoken about historically in terms of the Cuban Revolution and ideological anti-imperialism, the coronavirus pandemic has thrust Cuba onto the international arena and as a formidable opponent to capitalism. While Western countries struggle to cope with increasingly failing healthcare systems that account for a high death rate among coronavirus patients, Cuba is managing the situation at home while also maintaining its internationalist outreach. No longer isolated, Cuba and its doctors are very much in demand by the same governments that pander to U.S.
Enhanced transcript on an interview with PressTV
Background
Cuba complained recently that a shipment of test kits, masks and respirators, donated by the Chinese Alibaba group, didn’t arrive because the American company tasked with transportation feared breaching US sanction rules. Washington imposed an embargo on Cuba in 1962 after the island nation nationalized its oil industry. The measures have been denounced by the United Nations 28 years in a row.
PressTV: What are your views on this?
Preparing for a pandemic requires understanding that a change in the relationship between people is primary and the production of things is secondary and flows from social factors. Investors in profit-based medicine cannot comprehend this concept. Nothing could exemplify it more clearly than Cuba’s response to the corona virus (COVID-19).
Like most everyone else, I don’t get out much lately due to shelter-in-place. But when I walk around my community, I am heartened by neighbors asking if there is anything we might need. I suspect this scenario is taking place everywhere.
Like most everyone else, I don’t get out much lately due to shelter-in-place. But when I walk around my community, I am heartened by neighbors asking if there is anything we might need. I suspect this scenario is taking place everywhere.
While the Coronavirus continues to ravage almost every nation on earth, Arab countries remain unable, or unwilling, to formulate a collective strategy to help the poorest and most vulnerable Arabs survive the deadly virus and its economic fallout.
Worse, amid growing international solidarity, we are yet to see a pan-Arab initiative that aims to provide material support to countries and regions that have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 disease.
The pandemic has exposed wealthy states’ neglect of healthcare. A new medical internationalism is needed. Image Courtesy: Malpensa airport website Rare are those photographs which can be declared iconic right after they are taken, without awaiting the approval of the connoisseurs, critics or people. It is an ordinary-looking photo, of a large team of people, … Continue reading After Covid-19, We Should All Be Cuba →
