The statement was part of resolution: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America on Cuba”, passed last November 2023 in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) by 187 countries in favor, two against (United States and Israel) and one abstention (Ukraine).
“Cuba also has evidence of US maneuvers to preclude Latin American companies from selling medical oxygen to Cuba,” according to the document.
Without admitting or rejecting this Cuban condemnation, the US representative to the UN acknowledged “all challenges faced by the Cuban people” and explained that in this regard “the US sanctions include exemptions with respect to imports of food, medicines and other humanitarian goods to Cuba”.
In July 2023, the U.S. Embassy in Cuba assured on X that “Medicines can be imported to Cuba from the U.S.!” and that the United States did approve “nearly USD$900 million in medical exports to Cuba” in 2023.
The reference document is tacit in stating that the exceptions refer to “recognized” humanitarian people or organizations, although we give the benefit of the doubt that in the skein of articles and paragraphs there is some technical juncture that a supplier can manage a commercial license through the complex bureaucratic system. But in addition to Cuba’s complaint about the US blockade on acquiring oxygen amid the emergency of the Covid 19 pandemic, in April 2020 it also condemned the prohibition to acquire artificial respirators because the two European suppliers were bought by the U.S. entity Vyaire Medical Inc., based in Illinois.
A few days earlier, a donation of medical supplies to fight off Covid-19 made by the Chinese Alibaba Foundation did not reach Cuba because the U.S. company -contracted to transport it- refused at the 11th hour, arguing that the US blockade regulations prevented it from doing so.
Cuban TV viewers still remember a heartbreaking chronicle that live-broadcast the pleas of a 14-year-old girl to then US president because the medicine that could save her life was blocked for her by the US government: the TV channel itself later reported the girl passed away before her 15th birthday.
In November 2021, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez denied that the U.S. Government offered humanitarian assistance to Cuba ahead of Covid-19, even during hard times given the lack of medical oxygen, and also referred to a fake news about his country’s refusal to receive one million of Covid-19 vaccine doses.
He acknowledged that, in those days of 2021, when Cuba was concluding its domestic immunization campaign by using its own-developed vaccines, the US Department of State (DOS) proposed to send one million of Covid-19 vaccine doses under the obligation to use them as a clinical trial, in addition to refusing legal responsibility for side effects.
In response, the Cuban FM assured that in a respectful manner “we have offered to use such a donation and another one from Cuba to immunize a country in great need of it”.
This week, the saga added another such story, in this case through blogs accused by Cuba of campaigning against it, which circulated the information of an alleged U.S. permission for Cuba to purchase USD$8 billion in medical supplies by 2024, but the Cuban Public Health Ministry (MINSAP) left them unsettled and without a counter-reply.
pll/mem/orm
