Fidel: Cuba offers the WHO thousands of doctors for Africa

["Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    [The United Nations Millennium Summit has been marked by the frequent
expression of noble sentiments lofty goals. Fewer have been the concrete
measures proposed to reach those goals, and even fewer the leaders willing
to point the finger at those responsible for the current state of affairs.

    [Fidel Castro was one of the speakers at the summit who did that, who
called things by their right names. But he was also, as far as I know, the
ONLY leader to propose, not just that someone else do something or that the
international community in general do something, but who made a unilateral
offer on behalf of his own country to contribute to begin solving some of
these problems.

    [The offer was made at one of the less formal roundtable discussions at
the summit, which were totally ignored by the mainstream press. Following is
what Fidel said there, as published in Granma International]

*    *    *

Fidel offers necessary personnel for
medical aid to Africa

Speech by President Fidel Castro Ruz, during Roundtable No. 2 of the
Millennium Summit, on the role of the United Nations in the 21st century,
United Nations, New York, September 7, 2000, Year of the 40th Anniversary of
the Decision of "Patria o Muerte."

TRANSLATION OF THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE

I have meditated a great deal about the seriousness of this subjects and a
series of data, but I think that this is a subject that has been discussed
for a more than 40 years, and actually we haven't progressed but rather gone
backwards.

Proof of what I say is that at the present time, in more than 100 countries
per capita income is lower than it was 15 years ago.

 Everybody here has expounded the ideas they most wished to transmit within
the brevity of the time available, and I would like to say that I am
profoundly affected by issues related to the disastrous state of health
currently affecting the world, particularly in the Third World countries. I
don't really like using a lot of figures, but I am going to use some.

Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa barely reaches 48 years. This is 30
years less than in the developed countries.

In terms of the maternal death rate, 99.5% of all such deaths occur in the
Third World.

The risk of maternal death in Europe is one per 1,400 births; in Africa it
is one per 16. The general mortality rate is similar.

More than 11 million under-fives die every year in the Third World as a
result of preventable diseases in the overwhelming majority of cases: more
than 30,000 every day, 21 every minute. While we are talking here, 100 are
dying.

Two out of every five children in the Third World countries suffer from
retarded growth, and one out of every three is underweight in relation to
age.

Two million female children are forced into prostitution.

In the underdeveloped countries, approximately 250 million children under
the age of 15 are obliged to work in order to survive.

Many people have also talked here on the issue of AIDS. I had the impression
some months ago, at the meeting in Durban, that the tragedy of AIDS in
Africa had been discovered by the West, and at that conference, as was
widely reported by the news agencies, there was talk of how to reduce the
cost of medical care for persons infected with AIDS and keep them alive. We
all know that the cost is $10,000 USD per infected person. It was affirmed
there by representatives from the Western nations, European countries in
general, that cost-saving formulas had to be sought. Everyone knows that it
costs close to $1,000 USD per person with AIDS to produce those medicaments
and, starting from a perfect formula and a perfect cocktail, that amount
could be greatly reduced. But more than a few African representatives
expressed a hard reality: that even if they were donated the medicaments,
they lacked the infrastructure to distribute and administer them.

On the other hand, I have also heard representatives from industrialized
countries like France, Sweden, Germany and others present here express their
disposition to help these Third World countries.

This is a question of life or death. I was asking myself: what could we do?
I remind you that Cuba is a small country, and poor. And something else:
besieged and blockaded. But I don't want to talk to you about that. Thanks
to the intensive educational programs that have been developed over many
years, Cuba now has a significant human capital, and human capital is
decisive; I would say that it is even more important than financial capital.
And our country has sufficient medical personnel to cooperate-if the United
Nations agrees-with the World Health Organization and with the peoples of
sub-Saharan Africa, who are suffering from this destructive scourge to the
greatest degree, in order to organize the infrastructure needed to
administer those medications in Africa on an emergency basis. I am not
exaggerating. This could signify 1,000 doctors, 2,000 or 3,000 health
workers, including paramedics who would be needed to collectively undertake
that program.

We don't have to wait for millions of children to die; a good proportion of
the 25 million persons infected could survive, thus averting growing numbers
of orphans, already close to 12 million, a figure which, in another few
years, will increase to 40 million, a Dantean tragedy!

No country whatever its resources, can develop with 25-30% of its population
infected with AIDS and millions and millions of orphans. In my view, this
would really signify the extermination of entire African nations, and
possibly a large part of the African continent. That is the reality.

For that reason, although I wasn't necessarily going to speak, I arrived
after the meeting opened because I was at the plenary session and, listening
to you, decided to propose this plan; thus, concretely: Cuba offers the
United Nations, the World Health Organization and the African countries the
personnel necessary for developing not only AIDS programs, but also other
health care programs, and also to give hands-on training there to technical
and nursing personnel.

The first thing we do in the places we go to is to create a medical school.
Africa needs thousands of doctors in order to provide one doctor per 5,000
inhabitants; our country has one doctor per 168 inhabitants. We have
experience in health care; currently some 2,000 doctors are doing an
excellent job working abroad. This is what I wish to propose concretely
here, in a spirit of cooperation. And hopefully the European countries, the
industrialized countries represented here, will take account of what I am
proposing and could make the effort to contribute to finding the
medicaments, to reducing their cost.

What is taking place in the world is worse than warfare. In Africa one
million people die from malaria every year while 300-500 million are
infected; moreover, two million people die of AIDS, and for every two who
die, four to five are infected-we know there have not been sufficient
advances as yet for a vaccine and it's not known when that's going to
materialize-and three million die of tuberculosis.

We are proposing, concretely, a program for Africa. I am not exaggerating in
the least and we are not seeking anything for ourselves. Wherever our
doctors go they do not talk about religion, or politics, or philosophy; they
have been fulfilling missions for years and have earned the greatest respect
and acknowledgement from the local population.

I leave this proposition in the hands of this United Nations roundtable, and
that's it.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.