© Rick Miller
Cuba
Country Overview
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has reported that Cuba, a poor country by most standards, has the world's third-lowest rates of infant mortality (lower than the US) and some of the highest global rates of child immunization (96 percent) and school enrollment (93 percent).1 Yet women and children in Cuba endure needless sickness and suffering because of the US embargo. In violation of international humanitarian law, the embargo—explicitly aimed at destabilizing the Cuban government—prevents Cuba from purchasing urgently needed food and medicine. The United Nations General Assembly regularly condemns the embargo, and members of the US Congress have repeatedly introduced bills to end it. But maintaining the longest embargo in US history has remained an obsession of successive US Administrations.
Despite the fact that the US embargo prevents Cuba from obtaining critical medicines and medical supplies, Cuba's public health system is one of the most reputable in the world. Free, comprehensive healthcare is guaranteed to everyone in Cuba, as are education, food, and other resources necessary for good health. With roughly one doctor for every two hundred people (the highest number of doctors per-capita in the world, and twice that of the US), Cuban doctors promote a preventative healthcare model that includes regular home visits, alternative and conventional medicine, and popular education.2 As a result, Cuba's health indicators are higher than most Latin American countries and on par with those in the US. In Cuba, the average life expectancy rate is 77.1, rivaling the US rate of 77.3. And Cuba's infant mortality rate of 7.5 per 1,000 births is lower than that of the US (8 per 1,000 births).3 Proponents of neo-liberal economics claim that the only way to improve healthcare and eliminate poverty is through free trade, privatization, and corporate deregulation. Yet Cuba demonstrates that high standards of health and healthcare are attainable when governments prioritize health and make it their responsibility to provide free, high-quality healthcare for all.
Cuba has received particular acclaim for its treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, which have held Cuba's infection rate to 0.07, one of the lowest in the world. Throughout the global South, HIV-infection rates have soared in part because pharmaceutical companies retain their hold on market prices, making the cost of prevention and treatment prohibitive for poor countries. But in 1993, Cuban scientists began developing their own antiretroviral medicines and since 2001, Cubans who are HIV-positive have been receiving these medications at no cost. Cuba now offers HIV/AIDS antiretrovials at affordable prices to other countries in the Caribbean, a region with the second worst HIV-infection rate (2.3 percent) in the world after sub-Saharan Africa (9 percent). Cuba also sends doctors abroad to provide treatment to HIV/AIDS patients and share Cuba's successful public health model of HIV/AIDS education and prevention.
US-Cuba Policy
Under George W. Bush, US policy towards Cuba has taken a dangerous turn for the worse. [For full details, see New US-Cuba Policies.] Instead of heeding the calls of public opinion and Congress, which has voted to end the travel ban for the last several years, the Bush Administration has placed even tighter restrictions on travel to Cuba and money and other goods sent to family members on the island.
These measures cause extreme hardship for Cuban families. Moreover, by eliminating nearly all educational and cultural exchanges between Cuban and US citizens, US policy severely restricts access to first-hand knowledge about Cuba, such as the impact of the US embargo on the Cuban people.
Although 80 percent of US citizens and the majority of Congress and Cuban-Americans now support an end to the travel ban—and many Cuban Americans and Cuban nationals living in the US oppose the most recent restrictive measures—US Administrations have continued to cater to the hard-line Cuban-American community, who believe punishing the Cuban people will bring about ideological and political change in Cuba.
End Notes
- UNICEF, Cuba. http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba_2748.html
- PAHO, Health in the Americas. Washington, D.C. 2002.
- UNICEF, Cuba. http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba_2748.html