The U.S. is refusing to remove Cuba from its “terrorism list” even as Washington and Havana regularly hold counter-terrorism cooperation talks instituted during the Obama administration. This “terrorism” designation blocks Cuba from accessing the international banking system and prevents other countries from carrying on normal trade with Havana.

In Congress, Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Jose Diaz-Balart (R-FL) have recently succeeded in gaining enactment of new extreme legislation against Cuba. Now Washington will not remove Cuba from the “terrorism list” until it becomes a “multiparty democracy,” unlike, for example, key U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.

And, seemingly contradicting Washington’s aim of encouraging privatization in Cuba, another new measure prohibits U.S. funding for “business promotion, economic reform and entrepreneurship” on the island. Washington will also now seek sanctions against countries that pay Cuba for services by Cuban doctors.

These developments on Capitol Hill reflect a policy of generating stark privation and chaos in Cuba, with the goal of provoking an internal collapse of its society. The Biden administration says, meanwhile, that they will not reconsider its Cuba policy for the foreseeable future. By maintaining and strengthening his aggressive embargo, President Biden continues to break his campaign promise to move toward the normalization of relations with Cuba.

The post No Letup as U.S. Embargo Strangles Cuba appeared first on Global Health Partners.

Cubans with heart disease are facing a three-year wait for lifesaving pacemakers, as the U.S. embargo prevents the country from purchasing these devices in the global market. Some 70 elderly Cubans are currently unable to leave their hospital beds until they receive pacemakers; these patients and many others will not survive unless we send help now.

Washington’s spurious inclusion of Cuba on its “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list blocks Havana from accessing the international banking system, and severely limits its supply of hard currency. This sanction constrains Cuba’s ability to purchase pacemakers from global suppliers.

To confront this crisis, Global Health Partners is launching an urgent drive, in partnership with the Saving Lives Campaign, to deliver desperately needed pacemakers to Cuban Hospitals. Our plan is simple – to provide Cuba with as many pacemakers as possible to address this shortage; Cuba needs 2,000 pacemakers to address immediate patient needs.

GHP has sourced pacemakers from a private manufacturer that already has service technicians in Cuba, and we’ve applied for a Commerce Department export license to expedite delivery. (The embargo mandates that medical supplies bound for Cuba from anywhere in the world that have more than 10% of U.S. manufactured components require a special export license.) We aim to raise $150,000 for an initial purchase of 300 pacemakers that we hope to send in next 90 days.

We are collaborating in this campaign with a new partner, MediCuba Europa, which, like GHP, has a strong track record of delivering lifesaving medicines and medical supplies to Cuba. Dr. Helen Yaffe, a leading expert on Cuba’s public health system, is also advising in this vital effort.

Our two most recent emergency drives made a profound difference for Cuba’s healthcare system. GHP supplied Cuba with six million vaccination syringes to enable its doctors to inoculate the population with its own effective Covid vaccines. We then donated a dozen anesthesia machines and tons of surgical supplies to Havana’s Calixto Garcia Hospital, where operating rooms had stood empty for lack of this vital surgical equipment. We’re now building on these successes to urgently address the pacemaker shortage.

This new GHP aid initiative adds to our 2024 commitment to provide Cuba with six 40’ containers of medical supplies and millions of dollars in medicines for rare diseases. Since 1994, we have delivered more than $260,000,000 in medical aid to Cuba. GHP’s large scale medical deliveries are not a substitute for normal trade between Cuba and the global community, a humanitarian necessity blocked by the embargo. But at this critical moment we can act together to alleviate suffering by bolstering Cuba’s beleaguered health care system with lifesaving pacemakers.

Please join us now to build this crucial campaign!

The post Cuba Medical Crisis Deepens as U.S. Embargo Tightens appeared first on Global Health Partners.

Please stand with us now to show your solidarity with a country that has done so much for the health of its own people, and for struggling communities around the world.

Over the past year alone, Cuba has sent 3,700 health workers, in 52 international medical brigades, to 39 countries overwhelmed by the pandemic. Cuba’s international medical brigades have treated patients and saved lives for the past 15 years in 53 countries confronting natural disasters and serious epidemics, such as the Ebola crisis in West Africa.

GHP has already delivered more than $190 million worth of scarce medicines and medical supplies to Cuba, while building opposition to Washington’s cruel and immoral embargo. With this track record, and your solidarity, we’re ideally positioned to make this syringe campaign a success.

Cuba is poised for a decisive push to combat the deadly virus: it has developed five internationally recognized candidate COVID-19 vaccines, with two in Phase III clinical trials as of April 2021. Cuba has 11.3 million people, but plans to produce 100 million doses of vaccine, to meet its commitment to sharing its low-cost vaccines with poor countries in the developing world.

Your gift will directly change so many lives. Here’s how, together, we’ll have an immediate impact: With $1,000 we can send 28,571 syringes to Cuban hospitals; $360 will buy the syringes to vaccinate 10,265 people; and $150 will send 4,285 syringes to Cuba’s community clinics.

But your contribution of any size is urgently needed to stock our first shipment of syringes. Cuba has the vaccine it needs to protect its people from COVID-19, and a well-developed grassroots medical network to provide the shots. The only thing missing is the syringe supply to make it possible.

Please help put lifesaving vaccines into Cuban arms now with your generous, tax-deductible donation to our syringe campaign. Let’s match Cuba’s internationalism with our own friendship and compassion for the Cuban people!

With my deepest gratitude,

Edward Asner

The post Help Send Syringes to Cuba! — An urgent appeal from Ed Asner… appeared first on Global Health Partners.

A second unit will be installed at Hospital Siuna in Las Minas, another community on the Atlantic Coast with limited drinking water. We’re hoping to expand this program over the next year, installing as many as a dozen units throughout Nicaragua at key Ministry of Health facilities.

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GHP is also collaborating with H2OpenDoors in Cuba, working with its Ministry of Health to provide water purification units to some of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Irma.

As soon as we receive an export license from the U.S. Commerce Department, we will deliver two units to Cuba; they have the same specs as the units we have installed in Nicaragua, each with the capacity to produce 20,000 liters of water daily. The first will be positioned at the Hospital Manuel Ascunce Domenech in Camaguey; the second location is being determined.

We hope to expand this program aggressively in Cuba over the next three years, as the country’s water infrastructure is outdated and needs to be modernized.

The post GHP Provides Safe Drinking Water to Nicaraguans and Cubans appeared first on Global Health Partners.

As GHP Executive Director Bob Schwartz told the delegates, “As all of you know, cervical cancer is a curable disease if detected early. But for all too many women who lack access to early detection, cervical cancer is a death sentence. It is one of the leading causes of death among women 30-55 years of age in Nicaragua and throughout the developing world. We intend to change this, starting today, right here in this room.”

The post GHP Combats Cervical Cancer’s Deadly Toll On Nicaraguan Women appeared first on Global Health Partners.

Taking aim, meanwhile, at Nicaragua’s economy, the House, on October 3, passed the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act of 2017, which aims to cut off Managua’s access to loans from multilateral financial institutions. This measure will dramatically impact Nicaragua’s access to economic development funds from sources such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, where Washington wields the decisive vote.

Last month, Executive Director Bob Schwartz visited our projects in Nicaragua, where the threat posed by the “Nica Act” is already beginning to take hold, forcing severe budget cuts that will constrain the social services sector. As the country’s National Assembly warned, the measure “is blind, deaf, and irrational, conceived by insensitive minds, troublemakers, and completely closed to recognize the rights of Nicaraguans to live away from the conflicts of the past.” In this very troubling context, GHP’s humanitarian projects play an even more vital role in providing medical resources to Nicaragua’s poorest citizens. We are proud to report that, over the past two years, GHP has shipped more than $40 million worth of essential medicines to Nicaragua.

The post Trump Takes Aim at Cuba, Nicaragua appeared first on Global Health Partners.