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Cuba, COVID and vaccine equity

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Vive Cuba! While wealthy nations shamelessly pay only lip service to global vaccine equity, this small island nation has not only succeeded in developing its own vaccines, it’s now exporting them to vaccine-starved countries in the developing world.

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Low-income Cuba appreciates what most wealthy nations, Canada included, are oblivious to or willfully and recklessly ignore – that vaccinating the world is the only pathway out of the COVID crisis.

As Globe and Mail reporter Geoffrey York reminded Canadians recently, global health experts have been starkly warning Canada and other wealthy countries for almost a year: “Ensure that COVID-19 vaccines reach the poorest corners of the world – or new coronavirus variants will inevitably emerge.”

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The detection of the new COVID variant, Omicron, is a case in point.

Despite a decades-old policy of intensive economic strangulation from a hostile United States government, Cuba has outshone much of the developed world with its deft management of the COVID crisis.

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Not only has socialist Cuba shown up wealthy capitalist countries with its internationally acclaimed expertise in biotechnology, it’s demonstrated what’s possible when medical science is decoupled from private profit.

According to British scientific journal Nature, as of Nov. 18, 89 per cent of Cuba’s population had received at least one dose of Soberana 02 or another Cuban vaccine, Abdala, produced in Havana’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

The center reported in July that Abdala was more than 92 per cent effective in phase III trials that included 48,000 participants. It significantly reduces transmission, critical illness and death, Cuban officials say.

From the outset Cuba was determined to achieve early vaccination of its children. As of late November, it reported, it had fully inoculated more than 80 per cent aged two to 18. Canada has just begun to vaccinate 5-11-year-olds.

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What makes these accomplishments even more noteworthy is that Cuba, often disparaged as a country riddled with inefficiencies, was able to manufacture its own vaccines. That demonstrates a capacity even wealthy countries like Canada can’t match.

Cuba says it has the wherewithal to produce 100 million vaccines annually. It’s in process of commercially exporting vaccines to Vietnam, Venezuela, Nigeria and Nicaragua.

While the claims are impressive, Cuba’s vaccine efficacy remains unclear. Trial results haven’t yet been submitted for peer review and published in international scientific journals, a standard in vaccine validation.

The reason for the delay is quite possibly the capitalist West’s habit of ignoring Cuban innovation, which is maybe why little has been reported about Cuba’s vaccine successes in mainstream media.

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The head of Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute, Vicente Verez Bencomo, has cited a history of scientific and medical journals rejecting submissions from Cubans while later publishing similar results from other countries.

Cuba’s vaccine story shows what’s possible when medical science is decoupled from private profit.

In the U.S. and other developed countries, “lifesaving medicines are developed thanks largely to public funding before their profits and distribution are ruthlessly privatized for corporate enrichment,” said Helen Yaffe, senior lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow.

That Cuba’s biotech sector is wholly publicly owned and funded “means Cuba has de-commodified a vital human resource – the exact opposite policy direction that we’ve seen in these last four decades of (Western) neoliberalism,” Yaffe added.

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Cuba has its problems, among them violations of the civil and political rights of some of its disaffected citizens. But it’s forward thinking, ingenuity and global neighbourliness should be recognized.

As Amnesty International (AI) stated recently, the developed world’s unconscionable hoarding of vaccines and refusal to share vaccine-making technology is an unprecedented international human rights crisis. It causes tens of thousands of preventable deaths in developing countries every week.

Early in my career I worked with organizations in several African countries researching and documenting human rights abuses in countries racked by war. Abuses were often extensive and egregious. What’s being perpetrated against low-income countries at present is of an order all its own.

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Global health experts say the ultimate solution to the problem is expanding vaccine production in the Global South. In October 2020 South Africa and India proposed that the World Trade Organization authorize a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines.

But as York reports, the proposal, supported by more than 100 countries, has been stalled by a handful of wealthy countries, primarily in Europe.

“Against the backdrop of these gross inequalities, BioNTech, Moderna and Pfizer are set to make US$130 billion combined by the end of 2022,” AI said, adding, “Profits should never come before lives.”

Gary W. Kenny is retired from a career in international human rights and development and is a writer residing in rural Grey County.

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