Friday, August 23, 2019

Guided by Love for Others
The Trump administration has enlisted USAID to use three million dollars, contributed by taxpayers, “to investigate… human rights violations in Cuba, including forced labor in so-called medical missions”

Elson Concepción Pérez | internet@granma.cu
August 20, 2019 15:08:46
The Cuban Medical Brigade in Mozambique. Photo: Granma

When it comes to inventing reports and receiving money for this service, there are always some impostors or mercenaries ready to lend themselves to the task of fabricating lies in print.

Only two elements are needed: that the United States pays and one or several appear with an appetite for alms, willing to do the job.

Now the government of Donald Trump, through the United States Agency for International Development, (USAID) has decided to use three million dollars contributed by taxpayers, to fund “organizations to investigate, compile and analyze information related to human rights violations in Cuba, including forced labor in so-called medical missions.”

I imagine that they are already lining up, inside or outside the country, preparing to "take a bite" of the money, and with sharpened pencils, are already writing the "horror" that the following figures reflect:

Currently Cuba has 66 medical brigades abroad with 38,262 collaborators, of whom 18,384 are doctors.

From 1963 to the present, 407,000 health professionals have been present in 164 countries on all continents.

More than 35,000 professionals from 136 countries have been trained in Cuban universities, and 8,478 from 121 nations are currently studying here.

Faced with the terrible situation of Ebola in Africa, Cuba's response was aimed, fundamentally, at maintaining our 32 medical brigades there, with 4,048 collaborators, of whom 2,269 were doctors, including those in Sierra Leone with 23, and Guinea Conakry with 16. Some 256 health professionals from the Henry Reeve International Contingent specialized in disaster situations and large epidemics, were also sent to countries affected by Ebola - 165 in Sierra Leone, 53 in Liberia, and 38 in Guinea Conakry.

Their positive impact on the lives of millions of people in tens of thousands of communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean is unquestionable.

I imagine that with this data alone, the developers of USAID reports on Cuban medical missions could finish their "work" and devote time to more urgent needs.

For those who pay these exorbitant sums, my suggestion would be to use this money to but medicine and donate them to the most impoverished populations of the Third World. Or pay travel expenses and per diem to doctors from their country willing to cure the sick and save lives, as Cubans do, in the most remote places on the planet.

“A swallow does not a summer make,” but using a resentful deserter to discredit a mission, as noble as this, is what is being sought and paid for by USAID, more than once identified as a collaborator of the CIA.

There are millions of sick. Millions hungry, too. And all, when they reach this world, join the ranks of human beings. Why not cure them, and feed them, as a true gesture of respect for human rights?

As our President Miguel Díaz-Canel tweeted, Cuban medical collaboration is "an example of solidarity, humanity, and noble and legitimate cooperation between countries of the South."

May these malicious wage earners and their employers remember that our doctors are guided only by their love for others.

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