Cuban Public Health Minister (MINSAP) Jose Angel Portal reviewed the visitor’s impressions on the MINSAP website during a meeting on Wednesday, at which Douhan was informed about the consequences of Washington’s economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba.
At the meeting, professionals from major Cuban medical institutions exemplified the impact of that hostile policy on the provision of the several services to the population.
It is precisely the blockade, one of the cruelest mechanisms used by successive US administrations to try to subdue our people, he pointed out.
“For this reason, when the Government of the United States speaks to the world about human rights violations in Cuba, we cannot stop thinking about how violative is this inhumane blockade to which we have been subjected, by that same Government for so many years,” he explained.
Portal noted that only in the healthcare sector, the accumulated damage for six decades of the blockade amounts to approximately 3.386 billion dollars. Meanwhile, in 2022, this policy caused losses worth 150.41 million dollars.
Among the main effects, Portal highlighted the obstacles to acquiring medicines and medical technology from the United States or equipment containing more than 10 percent of components from that country.
The blockade also affects the availability of technological equipment, the impossibility of improving the technical state and the supply of spare parts to many medical and non-medical equipment, as well as the negative economic impact due to financial restrictions exerted by the United States on international banks.
These are only the numbers and objective elements, in which it is impossible to collect the pain that has meant for our population, who cannot count on the most appropriate solutions for their condition, the minister added.
“And as if all this were not enough, while in Cuba we fought the Covid-19 pandemic, we also had to do so amid an unparalleled tightening of that inhumane blockade, which caused, and continues to do so, bigger limitations on resources in all areas of the National Healthcare System.”
Portal insisted on the multiple obstacles that Cuba is facing, with the commitment, professionalism, knowledge and sensitivity that have always defined the actions of healthcare workers, who not only have defended life in our country, but also in many other nations around the world over the past six decades.
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