Behind Cuba’s Covid Uprising

Most poor countries put all hands on deck in this crisis. Havana exports its doctors.

By Mary Anastasia O'Grady. Excerpts:

"independent lawyers, medical professionals and civil-society groups on the island have begged Havana to allow international humanitarian aid to reach people directly. The regime refuses. Now the crisis is near cataclysmic proportions."

"Havana wants the world to believe that Cuban hardship in healthcare is caused by the U.S. embargo. But food and medicine are exempt from the embargo. As Julie Chung, now acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, tweeted in April 2020, the U.S. “routinely authorizes the export of humanitarian goods, agricultural products, medicine, and medical equipment to support the Cuban people.” Ms. Chung further noted that in 2019 the U.S. exported millions of dollars of medical goods to Cuba."

"Shortages of medications for treatable illnesses in Cuba are routine. The contagious mite infestation of the skin known as scabies, for example, can be remedied with antibiotics and topical medicines like permethrin. Yet Cuban public-health officials have been helpless to stop it from spreading across the island."

"as the scabies epidemic shows, the decrepit hospital and outpatient network cannot even tend to run-of-the-mill illnesses, never mind Covid-19."

"On July 6, Diario de Cuba quoted a Facebook post by an emergency-room nurse at the Faustino Pérez Provincial Hospital, in the capital city of the province of Matanzas: “There are no beds or stretchers, a hospital without water for more than six hours in two periods of the day.”

The same story quoted a healthcare professional at Héroes del Moncada Polyclinic in the city of Cárdenas describing on Facebook the plight of the sick: They “do not receive medical attention when they need it most or they must wait in a deteriorated state of health in long lines, and the reason is that there is not enough health personnel to cover all the fronts.”"

"The dictatorship claims it sends tens of thousands of healthcare workers around the globe out of altruism. But the medical missions are a money-making operation. Countries pay Havana for the workers in dollars or euros and it gives only a fraction of that income to the in-country Cuban."

"in the past year Cuba “capitalized on the pandemic by increasing the number and size of medical missions and refused to improve the program’s transparency or address labor violations and trafficking crimes despite persistent allegations from observers, former participants, and foreign governments” of Cuban abuses." 

"Cuba produces pharmaceutical products but exports them for profit rather than making what is needed available to the population."

"it is administering the homemade vaccine Abdala to Cubans and Venezuelans before it has cleared clinical trials or peer review and without informed consent."