Deaf to international demand, the United States government will maintain its policy of economic, financial, commercial and health blockade against Cuba, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, which also affects Cubans. .
Nor will Washington send emergency humanitarian aid to the island, which it excluded from a list for which it will distribute nearly 508 million dollars among 106 nations.
This was announced by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID,) which reported on the package intended to help control the spread of the new coronavirus.
The funds, for health and economic destinations, will be delivered to multilateral and non-governmental organizations involved in actions such as rapid public health, water and sanitation information campaigns, and the prevention and control of infections in health care centers.
None of these organizations are Cuban, nor will they be able to invest resources in programs to combat the disease on the Caribbean island.
It is also clear in another document issued by the Treasury Department, in charge of maintaining the bolt and tightening it further to suffocate Cuba and its citizens regardless of the current difficult situation.
The pronouncement justifies the exclusion of the small and neighboring country on the grounds that the ’embargo’ allows’ legitimate trade, assistance or activity related to humanitarian assistance in accordance with the regulations of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
However, it acknowledges that the blockade ‘remains in force and most of the transactions between the United States, or persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and Cuba continue to be prohibited. ‘
And then he notes that ‘OFAC maintains several general license authorizations designed to allow relief and humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people,’ the document states.
It does not say, however, that OFAC applies with all the rigor the provisions of the fence, by which Cuba cannot access medical equipment and supplies, much less life-saving health technologies.
A few days ago authorities from the largest of the Antilles denounced that the company Medicuba will not be able to acquire the artificial respirators contracted from the manufacturers IMT Medical AG and Acutronic.
The cause repeats. Those signatures were bought by a US company which, due to the prohibitions on the blockade, will not be able to sell to Havana those equipment, vital to attend to patients with the new coronavirus.
This is in addition to the effects of the siege on the Cuban health sector, which only between April 2018 and March 2019 registered, due to the blockade of the White House, losses of more than 104 million dollars.
The Treasury Department clarified that the blockade on Cuba ‘aims to sanction the communist regime in Cuba, which for decades has oppressed the Cuban people and has been unable to satisfy its most basic needs.’
The truth is that the two thousand 734 Cuban citizens admitted to hospitals today, and the more than seven thousand under observation of the Primary Health Care system in their homes, will not have access to medicines, lung ventilators and other supplies of American origin for their cure.
Nor will medical personnel working on the first line of confronting the pandemic be eligible for Made in USA protection.
This is despite the fact that, according to OFAC’s Cuban Asset Control Regulation, it includes general licenses for transactions and re-exports from a third country of medicines and sanitary devices and even investments in island hospitals.
But all this, and more, depends on the approval of the State Department and, in other cases that of Commerce, read the government of President Donald Trump, for whom the pandemic seems an opportunity to surrender to Cuba, this time by the ravages of the Covid-19.
source: Prensa Latina
