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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"><font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/15/cuba-working-on-a-peoples-vaccine-the-us-and-the-world-should-get-behind-it/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/15/cuba-working-on-a-peoples-vaccine-the-us-and-the-world-should-get-behind-it/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Cuba Working on a 'People’s Vaccine’:
the US and the world should get behind it <br>
</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/beth-geglia/"
rel="nofollow">Beth Geglia</a> - March 15, 2021</span></div>
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<p>“The life of just one person is worth more than the
private property of the richest man.” This is what’s
written on the Calixto Garcia public hospital in Havana
Cuba as a testament to the country’s commitment to free
public healthcare, and to putting people before profit.
I know this about Cuba because in March, at the onset
of the global Covid-19 pandemic, I spent a week in the
ICU at Calixto Garcia. I had been hit by a speeding
ambulance, and Cuban doctors saved my life, operated on
me twice, and nursed me to stability before putting me
on a private medical evacuation flight back to the U.S.
All of this, including the flight, was free of cost to
me- covered by Cuba’s government-run insurance for
foreign visitors. From my hospital bed, as the global
emergency around me escalated, I witnessed how the
Cuban government swiftly mobilized resources to protect
its citizens from Covid-19: at-home testing for anyone
with symptoms, door to door preventative education in
the most vulnerable neighborhoods, and coordinated
isolation when necessary. While deaths soared toward
100,000 in the U.S., Cuba was able to get the average
daily <a
href="https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/cuba?country=~CUB"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">Covid-19 related deaths
close to zero</a> for most of May-August.</p>
<p>Cuba’s humanist approach when it comes to health was
not new to me. In 2013, I co-directed a documentary on a
free hospital in northern Honduras. The doctors there,
all from afro-indigenous Garifuna communities, had been
trained in Cuba at the Latin American School of Medicine
(ELAM) for free. Cuba created the ELAM in 1999 to train
doctors from the poorest regions of countries around the
world (including the U.S.), providing full scholarships
of six years tuition, room, and board, with the hope
that these doctors would return and provide accessible
and preventative healthcare in their communities. The
ELAM was born as a response to the devastation of
Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and has trained tens of
thousands of doctors from over 110 countries since then.</p>
<p>Cuba is now poised to play an important role in global
efforts to curb the pandemic. New variants in South
Africa and Brazil, all with yet unknown implications for
vaccine effectiveness, have shown us that any effort to
achieve herd immunity is only as good as it is
accessible equitably across the globe. Yet, as
predicted, the <a
href="https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">global north is
outpacing the global south dramatically</a> in
vaccination.</p>
<p>On February 3, <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HStAQYRreIc&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=JAMANetwork"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">Anthony Fauci said</a>,
in an event hosted by the Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA) network, that developing
COVID-19 vaccines “is not a race.” “We want everybody to
get over the finish line,” he assured. Dr. Fauci
mentioned the Russian and the Chinese vaccines and
later suggested that the U.S. should help other
countries strengthen their vaccine manufacturing
capacity to promote more vaccinations globally. At no
point did he mention Cuba.</p>
<p>Thanks to an established publicly-funded biotechnology
program, Cuba currently has four vaccine candidates. One
of those vaccines, Soberana 02, started Phase 3 clinical
trials in early March. Another candidate, Abdala,
started Phase 2 trials in February. Both vaccines are
being developed by public research institutions and are
the most promising candidates in Latin America. The fact
that Dr. Fauci failed to mention these candidates is
disappointing.</p>
<p>The U.S. and other governments should set aside
antiquated hostility toward Cuba and support the
development and distribution of its vaccines. The first
step is to take the vaccine candidates seriously and
remove any barriers presented by U.S. sanctions. Second,
global actors should support Cuba’s efforts to scale up
manufacturing, should they decide to pursue this. Unlike
current vaccines which are hoarded by the Global North,
Cuba’s vaccine candidates have the potential to become
the “people’s vaccine” that activists and scientists
around the world <a href="https://peoplesvaccine.org/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">have called for</a>.
For example, the World Health Organization’s (WHO)
Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) makes it
possible to have the first vaccine ever licensed openly
on the global stage. While the WHO’s better-known COVAX
program aims to pool procurement and distribute vaccine
doses more equally, it does nothing to address the
underlying intellectual property regime that produces
monopolies on vaccines and limits their manufacturing.
The C-TAP was created at the onset of the pandemic <a
href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/essential-medicines/intellectual-property/who-covid-19-tech-access-tool-c-tap.pdf?sfvrsn=1695cf9_36&download=true"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">to pool the rights to
life-saving technologies</a> and facilitate a truly
equitable and effective vaccine roll out, but no country
or company has chosen to license through the C-TAP to
date.</p>
<p>Regardless of the mechanism, Cuban officials have
stated a clear intention to, once again, place people
before profit. “Cuba’s strategy to market the vaccine
is a combination of things; first comes humanity and the
impact on health, and in second place is our industry’s
need to sustain sufficient production of the vaccine and
medicines for the country,” explained Vicente Vérez of
the Finlay Vaccines Institute in Cuba <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPb1DcsFFGo&feature=emb_logo"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">for Prensa Latina TV</a>.
“We are not a multinational where returns [on
investment] are the number one reason for existing, and
improving health is just a consequence. We work the
opposite way. For us, it’s about achieving health. The
returns are a consequence of achieving health, but they
will never be the priority.”</p>
<p>Having an adequately tested and accessible vaccine from
Cuba will, as the Soberana 02 name suggests, contribute
to the autonomy of countries like Cuba and nearby Haiti
to safeguard their populations free from dependence on
multinational monopolies. But it also might be the
saving grace for the botched global vaccine rollout that
leaves us all susceptible to new strains. The US should
support Cuban vaccine development because it is good for
us and it is good for the world.</p>
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<p> <em>Beth Geglia is a researcher and documentary
filmmaker. She is completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology
at American University. Her doctoral research focuses on
ZEDE development, governance, and land struggles in
Honduras.</em> </p>
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