HEALTH-CUBA: Gov’t Downplays Importance of US Humanitarian Aid

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 28 1997 (IPS) - The scarce humanitarian aid provided by the United States cannot hide the economic embargo’s effects on Cuba’s health system, said government officials, who refuted Washington’s claims that it was the “biggest source” of such aid.

Estimates by the Cuban government put the economic damages caused by the nearly four decades old U.S. blockade at upwards of 60 billion dollars, more than five times Cuba’s foreign debt.

U.S. donations, meanwhile, have only accounted for five percent of all humanitarian aid received by Cuba since the start of the economic crisis that has gripped the country for the past seven years.

A report presented by Vice-President Carlos Lage this week states that U.S. humanitarian aid has been equivalent to 0.3 percent of the funds the Cuban state has earmarked for public health.

“The U.S. government is trying to save its public image, by repeating over and over again that it authorises humanitarian aid,” Lage, a physician, told 1,200 experts from 22 countries at the sixth International Seminar on Primary Care held Wednesday to Friday in Havana.

Without making any direct reference, Lage attempted to refute a report that representatives of the U.S. government and independent organisations presented in the United States at a September seminar on “Health and Nutrition in Cuba: Effects of the U.S. Embargo”.

According to that report, Washington is “the greatest source of humanitarian aid” to Cuba, having sent 227 million dollars in food, medicine and other basic articles to the population here.

“That figure does not include millions of dollars in money and supplies sent by Cuban exiles and other U.S. residents,” said the U.S. State Department’s head of Cuban affairs, Michael Rannemberger.

The U.S. official called those sources “the Cuban population’s main channel of supplies,” and said it was restrictions imposed by the government of Fidel Castro that curbed economic growth and affected the health sector.

Experts from both countries calculate that the Cuban population of more than 11 million receives around 500 million dollars a year through money orders from abroad.

More than two million Cubans are estimated to be living overseas, 1.043 million of whom were residing in the United States as of 1994, according to the University of Havana’s Centre of Demographic Studies.

Lage said public health expenditures rose from 6.5 percent of the budget in 1989 to 9.3 percent last year, in spite of the 34.8 percent decline in Gross Domestic Product from 1990 to 1993. More than 1.19 million Cuban pesos (on par with the dollar at the official exchange rate) were earmarked for health last year, according to sources at the Ministry of Finances and Prices.

The vice-president acknowledged “the humanitarian gesture and benefits provided by the donations” from the United States. But, he added, these “cannot substitute trade due to their limited volume and intermittent character.

“From 1992 to 1995, U.S. subsidiaries were granted only eight licences to do business with Cuba, mainly in the field of researching the Cuban market rather than the sale of products,” he pointed out.

More than 20,000 U.S. pharmaceutical and medical products were registered in Cuba until the early 1960s, when Washington began to enact laws prohibiting trade with Havana.

According to those laws, no country can sell Cuban products in the United States, nor can Cuba purchase, in any country, articles in which the U.S. content represents more than 20 percent of the total value.

In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the “Torricelli Act” which forbids U.S. subsidiaries in third countries – then estimated to be doing 700 million dollars a year in business with Cuba – from dealing with the Caribbean island nation.

“Food and medicine” accounted for 90 percent of those transactions, Lage told the seminar.

Local authorities say the embargo impedes Cuba’s access to medicine needed for treating childhood cancers and equipment and spare parts necessary to the health system, while it has hindered the development of the local biopharmaceutical industry.

Cuba cannot purchase ultrasound equipment from the Avalon Trading Company, the medicine needed for inducing births which is only available from Upjohn laboratories, or the Kodak x-ray film recommended for mammograms, for example.

“The recent wave of takeovers of corporations and companies from third countries by U.S. firms automatically extends the embargo,” said Lage. Cuba was forced to change its pacemaker supplier three times in one year due to that phenomenon, he added.

Nevertheless, in spite of the devastating economic crisis and the embargo, Cuba ended 1996 with an infant mortality rate of 7.9 per 10,000 live births, 2.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births and a life expectancy rate at birth of upwards of 75 years, according to government figures.