Cuban model of health care applauded at PHA 2000 - US sanctions against Cuba, Iraq condemned
- Press Releases
PRESS RELEASE - December 5,
2000
Cuban model of health care applauded at PHA 2000
US sanctions against Cuba, Iraq condemned
Calls by the Cuban and Iraqi delegations for the immediate lifting of sanctions against
their countries got strong approval from the hundreds of international delegates gathered
here on the second day of the historic People’s Health Assembly.
The Cuban experience in particular, of providing health care to its citizens despite all
the hardships of facing a hostile United States got a thundering ovation from the PHA 2000
participants. To shouts of `Long live Cuba’ and `Down with US Imperialism’
participants at the PHA 2000 denounced the United States embargo against this small
Caribbean country which has achieved some of the best health indicators in all of Latin
America and the developing world.
“Only the justice of the Revolution, our people’s capacity to resist, Fidel
(Castro)’s leadership and the politics based in broad consensus have allowed us to be
where we are” said Ramon Collado of the Cuban delegation who testified before the PHA
2000 delegates. According to him the US blockade over the past three decades had cost his
country over 67 billion dollars till now, and the cost was increasing every year.
“If at last this absurd politics of US against Cuba would cease” he said
pointing out that Cuba’s impressive record on the health front would have been much
more if the conditions had not been so unfavourable. Other speakers at the PHA 2000 forum
on `Inequality, Poverty and Health’ also expressed admiration for the Cuban model of
focusing on primary health care and social welfare.’
“No other country has been as consistent in taking measures towards achieving the
goal of `Health for All’ as Cuba” said Halfdan Mahler, former director-general
of the World Health Organisation. “It is a country which has virtually all
requirements of primary health care” he said.
David Woodward, an economist, also cited Cuba as an example of a country which had taken
people’s welfare as a priority and not gone blindly for economic growth alone.
Salma Jabu, a delegate from the northern territories of Iraq also called for an end to US
sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991 which she said had resulted in
massive destruction of infrastructure and affected health care seriously. Between 1988 and
1999 she said the infant mortality rate in Iraq had gone up by a massive 660 percent.
“The lifting of US sanctions, more democracy and greater participation within the
country are prerequisites for change in the situation of the Iraqi people” she said.
Citing the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 as an example Mr Abdur Razzak, Minister of
Water Resources, Bangladesh said that “ History has taught us that whatever changes
have taken place is through people’s power”. On the issue of how millions of
people around the world were still deprived of basic health care he said that
unfortunately the Alma Ata declaration in 1978 of `Health for All’ had turned out to
be a mirage.
The South African delegate to PHA 2000 compared the phenomenon of globalisation to that of
slavery and said that it had taken 300 years to end the slave trade because many African
chiefs had collaborated with the colonialists. Similarly in the contemporary world he said
third world leaders were collaborating with international institutions to rob their own
people of their resources.
