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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/02/a-history-of-how-cubas-anti-viral-medicine-is-being-used-in-china/">https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/02/a-history-of-how-cubas-anti-viral-medicine-is-being-used-in-china/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">A History of How Cuba’s Anti-Viral
Medicine is Being Used in China</h1>
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on February 20, 2020
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<p>Cuba’s antiviral Recombinant Interferon Alpha
2B (IFNrec) is among the medicines chosen by
China to treat the coronavirus, the disease that
has already caused at least 1,800 deaths in that
country. <span id="more-12019"></span>To date,
there is still no specific vaccine.</p>
<p>Interestingly Interferon has been in Cuba for
39 years; the country began the development of
this protein with antiviral properties at the
same time that the biotechnology industry was
being invented, in 1981.</p>
<p>In that year, you could count on one hand the
number of countries of the so-called first world
that were working on this set of techniques that
used living organisms – or part of them – with
the aim of obtaining products or modifying them,
to improve plants or animals, or developing
biological systems for specific purposes, in
particular for the improvement of human health.</p>
<p>This definition of biotechnology is based on a
wide range of knowledge that is supported by
elite disciplines such as microbiology, cell
biology, biochemistry, genetics, bioengineering
and chemical engineering, molecular biology and
immunology. The combination of these new
techniques led to the so-called aircraft carrier
of science, genetic engineering, which in Cuba
opened its first center in 1986.</p>
<p>How can the phenomenon of Cuban biotechnology,
which emerged in a country with no previous
industrial development and under the obsessive
blockade of the United States be explained? How
did it manage to become an economic line in a
few years, while improving the health of the
population, generating products and the basis of
treatments for thousands of patents? Why was
this an obsession of Fidel Castro?</p>
<p>Scientist Agustin Lage, who was director of the
Havana Immunoassay Center – one of the many that
emerged after the production of interferon alpha
and beta in Cuba – has explained the miracle.
“First a strong investment in education and
health, with the guarantee of universal and free
access is needed. Taking a stand for
biotechnology, even during the worst crisis Cuba
has experienced in the 1990s, and the social
ownership of institutions that guarantees
integration by freeing them from the trap of
competing against each other. The design of the
institutions as research-production-marketing
centers that addresses the complete cycle of
scientific research and the fact that in
biotechnology, as in other industries of the
so-called knowledge economy, productivity
depends directly on the creativity of the
workers, and this, in turn, on motivation.
Finally understanding that real, competitive
science is being done with first-rate results.”</p>
<p>All this explains why Cuba has the most
extensive vaccination program in the world
(recognized by the Pan American Health
Organization and other international
organizations), which includes universal
coverage for newborns with vaccines against 13
diseases; epidemiological surveillance with the
use of immunoassays for more than 20 diseases;
hospitals regularly use medicines such as
interferon, monoclonal antibodies, cytokines,
and other biopharmaceuticals. Heberprot-P, a
prodigious cure for diabetic foot ulcers that is
in common therapeutic use in the national health
network, could save a good part of the 83,000
patients who each year require amputation in the
United States, whose government refuses to allow
the commercialization of the drug because it
comes from the rebellious little island.</p>
<p>Other factors play a role in the high public
health indicators in Cuba, but there is no doubt
that research in immunology and the use of
industrial biotechnology have contributed to the
reduction of infant mortality to 5 per thousand
births and life expectancy is now 79 years. The
combination of these factors has allowed several
infectious diseases to disappear including
polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles
and others to be controlled or reduced in their
occurrence (hepatitis B; meningoencephalitis).</p>
<p>By the way, the man who put Fidel Castro on the
path of biotechnology in the early 1980s was a
Black Democratic Congressman from Texas, Mickey
Leland. He brought with him to Havana an eminent
oncologist from Houston who used interferon in
the treatment of cancer. Leland was deeply hurt
by his country’s government hostility to Cuba
and considered the blockade not only
counterproductive but inconsistent with U.S.
values. “The United States,” he said, “should
not refuse to sell medicine; the only victims
are the sick and the helpless.”</p>
<p>Leland, a fighter against poverty in Africa,
died in an airplane accident in Ethiopia shortly
after uttering these words. Another fact hidden
in the news.</p>
<p>Source: <a
href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/02/20/opinion/016a2pol">La
Jornada</a>, translation Resumen
Latinoamericano, North America bureau</p>
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