Cuba Will Send an
Additional 300 Medical Personnel to Haiti to Help Fight the Cholera Epidemic
The Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, revealed on
November 26 that Cuba will send an additional 300 doctors, nurses and health
technicians to Haiti, in response to an appeal by Valerie Amos, United Nations
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, which has so far raised less
than ten percent the $164 million needed. In a further note on November 27, he
reported that there had not been a single cholera death in seven days within the
37 treatment centres being run by the Cuban Medical Mission in Haiti.
Haiti:
Underdevelopment and Genocide
Reflections by Fidel Castro
Just a few months ago, on July 26, 2010, Lucius Walker, the head of the American organization
Pastors for Peace, at an encounter with Cuban intellectuals and artists, asked
me what the solution for Haiti’s problems would be.
Without a second’s delay, I
told him: “In today’s world, there is no solution, Lucius;
in the future of which I am speaking, there is. The US is a great food
producer, it can feed 2,000 million people, it would be able to build homes
that stand up to earthquakes; the problem is the way in which resources are
distributed. We have to return even the forests to Haitian territory; but
there is no solution in today’s world order.”
Lucius was referring to the problems of this mountainous, over-populated
country, stripped of trees, of fuel for cooking, communications and industries,
with a high rate of illiteracy, diseases such as HIV and being occupied by
United Nations troops.
“When those
circumstances change ―I added ― you yourselves, Lucius,
will be able to take American food to Haiti.”
The noble and humanitarian
leader of the Pastors for Peace died a month and a half later, on September
7th, at the age of 80, passing on the legacy of the seed of his example to many
Americans.
An additional tragedy had
not yet appeared: the cholera epidemic which, on October 25th, reported more
than 3,000 cases. To such a harsh calamity, add the fact that on November
5th, a hurricane ravaged its territory, causing flooding and rivers to
overflow.
We must dedicate to this
body of dramatic circumstances the attention it deserves.
Cholera appeared for the
first time in modern history in 1817, year in which one of the great pandemics
occurred devastating humanity in the nineteenth century; it had a huge
mortality rate principally in India. In 1826, the epidemic reappeared, invading
Europe, including Moscow, Berlin and London, moving on to our hemisphere from
1832 to 1839.
In 1846, a new even more
harmful epidemic is unleashed, striking at three continents: Asia, Africa and
America. Throughout the century, epidemics affecting those three regions were
repeated occurrences. However, in the course of more than 100 years, taking in
almost the entire twentieth century, the countries of Latin America and the
Caribbean saw themselves freed from this disease, until January 27th, 1991 when
it appeared in the Chancay Port in northern Peru;
first it extended along the Pacific coast and subsequently along the Atlantic
seaboard, to 16 countries; 650,000 persons became ill in a period of 6 years.
Without the least doubt,
the epidemic affects much more than poor countries in whose cities
over-populated neighbourhoods are massed together, many times lacking drinking
water, and the sewers which are carriers of the vibrio cholerae that spreads the disease pour
into the drinking water.
In the special case of
Haiti, the earthquake destroyed the water and sewer network wherever they had
existed, and millions of people live in tents that often even lack latrines and
everything gets mixed up together.
The epidemic that affected
our hemisphere in 1991 was the Vibrio cholera 01
biotype El Tor Ogawa serotype, exactly the same one that penetrated Peru that
year.
Jon K. Andrus, Associate
Director of the Pan American Health Organization, informed that the bacterium
that was present in Haiti was precisely that.
From it derived a series of circumstances to bear in mind, which at an
opportune moment will determine important considerations.
As we know, our country is
educating excellent Haitian medical doctors and providing health services in
that sister country for many years now. There were very serious problems in
that field and we were moving forward, year after year. Nobody could imagine,
since there was no history of it, that there would be an earthquake that would
kill more than 250,000 persons and cause innumerable wounded and injured. In
the face of that unexpected blow, our internationalist doctors pitched in with
greater zeal and tirelessly dedicated themselves to their work.
In the midst of the harsh
natural disaster, barely a month ago, the cholera epidemic broke out with a
fury; and as we have already stated, in such unfavourable circumstances, the
hurricane struck.
Faced with the serious
nature of the situation, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos, yesterday declared that 350 doctors and
2,000 nurses were needed to battle the disease.
The official made a call to
extend the aid further than Port-au-Prince and revealed that supplies of soap
and clean water were only reaching 10 percent of the families living outside of
the capital, without indicating how many were being reached in that city.
Different UN officials were
lamenting the fact in the last few days that the response from the
international community to the call for aid made to confront the situation was not even reaching
10% of the 164 million dollars urgently being requested.
“Amos called for a
swift and urgent reaction to prevent more human beings from dying of cholera”,
informed a news agency.
Today another agency
communicated that the numbers of Haitians who had died had now reached “1,523
persons, 66 thousand 593 have been cared for, and more than a million
inhabitants are still sleeping in public squares”.
Almost 40% of the sick have
been looked after by members of the Cuban Medical Brigade which has 965
doctors, nurses and technicians who have managed to reduce the number of dead
to less than 1 for each 100. With that level of care the number of dead
would not reach 700. As a norm, the people dying were extremely weakened by malnutrition
or other similar causes. Children who are detected on time, generally do
not die.
It is of vital importance
that we avoid the epidemic extending to other countries in Latin America and
the Caribbean because in today’s circumstances this would cause extraordinary
harm to the nations in this
hemisphere. We urgently need to seek efficient and rapid solutions in the fight
against that epidemic.
Today the Party and the
Government [of Cuba] made the decision to reinforce the Cuban Medical Brigade
in Haiti with a contingent of the Henry Reeve Brigade, made up of 300 doctors,
nurses and health technicians, that would add up to more than 1,200
collaborators.
Raul was visiting other
regions of the country and was informed in detail about everything.
The people of Cuba, the
Party and the Government, are once again measuring up to their glorious and
heroic history.
Fidel Castro Ruz
November 26, 2010
9:58 p.m.
Further Reflection: SEVEN DAYS WITH NO CHOLERA DEATHS
Yesterday I explained that in
I didn’t think I would be writing anything today about
the problem. However I give up that idea
in order to write a short Reflection on the subject.
Dr. Lea Guido, PHO-WHO representative en Cuba
―at this moment is representing both organizations in two countries and
is a person with a wealth of experience ―, stated this afternoon that
under current conditions Haiti can expect that the epidemic will affect 400,000
persons.
On the other hand, the Deputy Minister of Health of
Cuba and Chief of the Cuban Medical Mission, our country’s ambassador in Haiti
and other comrades in the mission, have been meeting all day with President
René Preval, Dr. Lea Guido, the Haitian Minister of Health and other officials
from Cuba and Haiti, drawing up measures that will be urgently applied.
The Cuban Medical Mission is looking after 37 centres
dealing with the epidemic where, until today, they have cared for 26,040
persons affected with cholera; to these they will immediately add, along with
the Henry Reeve Brigade, 12 more medical centres (for a total of 49) with 1,100
new beds, in tents that were designed and made for those purposes in Norway and
other countries, already purchased with earthquake funds, delivered to Cuba by
Venezuela for the reconstruction of the Haitian health system.
Late today encouraging news arrived from Dr. Somarriba: during the past seven days there has not been
one single death from cholera in the centres looked after by the Cuban Medical
Mission. That figure would be impossible
to keep up since other factors can come into play in that result, but the
acquired experience, suitable methods and the degree of dedication achieved
provides us with a very cheering idea.
We are also pleased that President René Preval, whose
term in office ends next January 16th, has made the decision to transform the
struggle against the epidemic into the most important activity of his life, one
he will leave as a legacy to the people of Haiti and to the government that
follows him.
Fidel
Castro Ruz
November
27, 2010
9:56
p.m.