3 Media Reports Document Cuba’s ‘Henry Reeve’ Humanitarian Medical Aid
Friends and comrades:
Here are 3 separate media reports that document the internationalism of the Cuban Anti virus medical brigades. Since the end of March these brigades have continued, but the international media crackdown, lead by the US, on reporting this great Cuban humanitarian Campaign, has Prevented the truth of this effort from being well known. The countries that benefitted, however, will never forget. Countries that accept humanitarian aid from Cuba are threatened with economic sanctions by the United States, an illegal act under international law.
Awarding this Brigada Medica Cubano Internacional (Henry Reeve) an INTERNATIONAL PEACE PRIZE is required.
Editor: Joseph Hancock
Dr. Frank Goldsmith
Associate & international Editor
For Help On Coronavirus, Italy Turns To China, Russia And Cuba
NPR (25 MARCH 2020)
In Italy, when political analysts say, “Here comes the cavalry” (“arrivano i nostri”), they’re not talking Hollywood Westerns. They’re saying, “Here come our guys: the USA has got Italy’s back.”
But today, the “our guys” have included less traditional friends.
In a mid-March telephone call, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte that China is willing to cooperate with Italy to combat the epidemic and build a “Health Silk Road.” Italy was the first G7 country to endorse China’s massive Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative.
Italy’s Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio, who heads the Eurosceptic, anti-establishment Five-Star Movement, has taken credit for this and noted how the good will generated by Italy’s gesture is now paying off.
Also on Sunday came a medical brigade from Cuba — whose experts had previously battled Ebola in Africa.
Thirty-seven Cuban doctors and 15 nurses (described by La Repubblica as the “most simpatico”) were deployed to the Lombardy town of Crema. Photos of the Cuban team posted on Italy’s Civil Protection Agency Facebook page had been shared almost 21,000 times by Wednesday morning. The many comments were of gratitude — and anger that the U.S., Italy’s traditional ally, seemed absent.
CNN (26 MARCH 2020)
Coronavirus-hit countries are asking Cuba for medical help. Why is the US opposed?
Havana (CNN) Cuba is offering to send doctors to more countries struggling with the coronavirus. But don’t accept their help, the US State Department says.
As health care systems around the world are strained to the point of collapse, Cuban health care “brigades” have been invited to assist medical workers in Italy, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Suriname, Jamaica and Grenada. On Tuesday, Cuban officials released video of a field hospital its health care workers had built in Lombardy, Italy, one of the regions hit hardest by the coronavirus.
REUTERS (25 APRIL 2020)
Cuba sends doctors to South Africa to combat coronavirus
HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba sent 216 healthcare workers to South Africa on Saturday, the latest of more than 20 medical brigades it has sent worldwide to combat the coronavirus pandemic, in what some call socialist solidarity and others medical diplomacy.
The Communist-run country has sent around 1,200 healthcare workers largely to vulnerable African and Caribbean nations but also to rich European countries such as Italy that have been particularly hard hit by the novel coronavirus.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has urged nations not to accept Cuba’s medical missions on charges it exploits its workers, which Havana denies. But the calls have largely gone unheeded as overwhelmed healthcare systems have welcomed the help.
Cuba, which has confirmed ,1337 cases of the virus at home and 51 deaths, has one of the world’s highest number of doctors per capita and is renowned for its focus on prevention, community-oriented primary health care and preparedness to fight epidemics.
“The advantage of Cuba is that they are a community health model, one that we would like to use,” South African Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told a news briefing earlier this month.
South Africa has recorded 4,361 cases, including 86 deaths, with 161,004 people tested for the virus as of Saturday.
The country has a special relationship with Cuba, which supported the fight against apartheid – a conflict that included Cuban troops who fought and died in southern Angola. After Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990, he repeatedly thanked revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
South Africa sent medical supplies to Cuba to assist in the fight against coronavirus in the plane that is now returning with the Cuban medical brigade, Cuba’s embassy there wrote on Twitter.
“These are times of solidarity and cooperation. If we act together, we can halt the spread of coronavirus in a faster and more cost effective manner,” Cuba’s ambassador to South Africa, Rodolfo Benítez Verson, said in a statement.
Cuba has sent its “armies of white robes” to disaster sites and disease outbreaks around the world largely in poor countries since its 1959 leftist revolution. Its doctors were in the front lines in the fight against cholera in Haiti and against Ebola in West Africa in the 2010s.
