United Nations, August 29 (RHC)– “Nothing and no one will prevent Cuba from continuing “wherever we are asked for help and a human life needs it,” said Ambassador Yuri Gala, reiterating his country’s commitment to solidarity cooperation here.
In the face of the lies of the United States, we will continue to provide more solidarity and cooperation, under the maxim of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, that being internationalists means settling our own debt to humanity, said Gala, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations.
Ambassador Yuri Gala recalled that since 1963, more than 605,000 Cuban health workers have provided services in 165 countries, and “we have contributed to the training of tens of thousands of doctors from various countries in the South.”
Speaking during the debate on Item 127 of the United Nations General Assembly agenda, “Global Health and Foreign Policy,” Ambassador Gala reaffirmed Cuba’s position in defense of health as a human right and not a commodity.
For more than six decades, with great effort, the Cuban government has implemented a universal and free public health system based on prevention, equity, and solidarity, he said.
He noted that this has occurred despite the devastating impact of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States, whose effects on the health sector are particularly visible and painful.
Ambassador Yuri Gala denounced “the arbitrary inclusion of our country on the list of supposedly state sponsors of terrorism, and the smear campaigns promoted by the United States against our medical services.”
Such a designation, Gala emphasized, reinforces the criminal siege against Cuba and “affects the health and well-being of millions of people both in our country and in other latitudes.” The Cuban representative noted that global health cannot be separated from geopolitical tensions, humanitarian emergencies, climate change, or the current unjust, exclusionary, and unequal economic order.
He insisted that international cooperation is essential to contribute to providing an effective response to global health emergencies and achieving true universal health coverage that benefits all people.
“Selfishness must be banished from international relations and unilateral coercive measures that negatively impact the enjoyment of the right to health must be eliminated,” he emphasized.
Ambassador Gala affirmed that countries of the South should not have to choose between paying their crippling external debt or financing their national health systems.
“More mutual support is needed to achieve resilient, universal, humane, and sustainable health systems that are not governed by market logic,” he added.
Gala emphasized Cuba’s support for the World Health Organization and rejected the unjustified attacks by the United States against this important organization.
[SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA]
