Colaboración entre EEUU-Cuba-Canada en la lucha contra covid-19
http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2020/04/13/colaboracion-entre-ee-uu-cuba-y-canada-en-la-lucha-contra-covid-19/#.XpXhr8hKiUn
Prensa Latina: Lanzan campaña en Canada para apoyar lucha de Cuba contra covid-19
https://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?o=rn&id=354699&SEO=lanzan-campana-en-canada-para-apoyar-lucha-de-cuba-contra-covid-19
U.S.-Cuba-Canada Collaboration in
Fighting COVID-19
-National Network On Cuba & Canadian Network On Cuba Campaign-
COVID-19 is ravaging the United States. Day by day, hour by hour,
the infected and fatalities continue to spiral ever upward, with the most
vulnerable communities, especially African Americans, disproportionately
affected. The entire healthcare system is being strained beyond its capacity to
provide adequate care and treatment, with doctors, nurses and other healthcare
workers driven to exhaustion and beyond in their valiant efforts to save lives.
A pandemic is by definition
global. Surely, in the face of this worldwide menace, now is the time for international
medical cooperation and solidarity. A time for joint efforts to confront
COVID-19. A time to put political differences aside in order to save lives. It
is for this reason, that we are launching a campaign to call for medical
collaboration with Cuba, to gain access to Cuban medical expertise to assist in
the fight against COVID-19.
Many countries are now drawing
on Cuba's expertise in fighting COVID-19. At the time of writing, Cuba has more
than 800 medical personnel serving in 18 countries, including especially
hard-hit Italy and Spain. In the coming days and weeks more Cuban medical
missions will be dispatched to other countries. These missions reflect Cuba's
long history of medical internationalism. Many of the medical personnel now
intimately involved in the fight against COVID-19 are part of the specially
trained Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade against Disasters and Serious
Epidemics, which distinguished itself in the fight against the Ebola epidemic
in West Africa.
Cuba also offers treatment
regimens, some of which are not available in the United States and Canada. A
key component of the protocols being used on the island and in the medical
missions is Cuba's Interferon Alfa 2B
Recombinant (IFNrec). While IFNrec is not a panacea, preliminary reports
are promising, pointing to IFNrec's efficacy (in combination with other drugs)
in treating COVID-19. In the recently published extensive medical handbook by
Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China on how to treat COVID-19,
IFNrec is a crucial component of the anti-viral treatment to combat the
coronavirus. It is also used as a preventative measure to protect healthcare
workers from contagion. At least 45 countries have sought to use IFNrec for
confronting the COVID-19 pandemic.
We call on the U.S. and
Canadian governments to lift restrictions on access to Cuban medical expertise,
including the importation of IFNrec, in order to more effectively combat the
COVID-19 pandemic.
A precedent for this opening
and cooperation has already been established by the joint venture--facilitated
by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo--between Cuba's Centre for Molecular
Immunology and Buffalo's Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in developing
CIMAvax, the Cuban lung cancer vaccine.
There was also the
collaboration between medical personnel from Cuba and the University of
Illinois on infant-mortality in Chicago. This campaign will also benefit
Canada, particularly, Indigenous peoples and Black communities that are the
most at risk from COVID-19. For example, the Canadian government has turned
down the request for Cuban doctors by the Southern Chiefs’ Organization,
representing the Anishinaabe and Dakota First Nations in southern Manitoba.
Join and support us in this
call for medical collaboration with Cuba. Cuban medical expertise can and will
save lives. As Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez stated: "Humanity
faces a common challenge. This pandemic does not respect borders or ideologies.
It threatens the lives of all, and it is everyone's responsibility to address
it."
Specifically, we call for:
1. Incorporating Cuba’s
Interferon Alfa 2B Recombinant in clinical trials in the U.S. and Canada.
2. U.S. Food and Drug
Administration approval for Cuba’s Interferon Alfa 2B Recombinant.
3. Allowing U.S.-Cuba-Canada
medical collaboration.
4. Ending U.S. economic and
travel sanctions against Cuba, including its extraterritorial nature and the
attempts to stop all other countries accepting Cuban medical brigades.
Please endorse this campaign at:
savinglives@us-cubanormalization.org
Use this letter by sharing and sending it to medical personnel,
unions, elected officials, community, faith-based and political
