If I had to choose an idea that summarizes what it has meant for the Cuban public health sector in 2020, we could say that it has been the year in which the island’s health system survived a lethal pandemic without stopping any of its essential services.
Every day of these ten long months children were born, people with the most diverse pathologies were able to access millions of medical consultations, patients with cancer and other diseases were operated on, many saw in a transplant the miracle of the second opportunity. … It did not interrupt child immunization, rehabilitation, assisted reproduction, blood donations, the dialysis program, specialized medical care for vulnerable groups …
More than 9,870 people, 85.1% of the total cases diagnosed with COVID-19 recovered from the disease caused by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. But thousands of lives were saved. Those who escape the pandemic and are also part of the victory of these months.
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In the midst of a complex global epidemiological scenario that still refuses to remit, and with the pain of the more than 140 people killed in Cuba
for this disease, the Cuban health system has shown its validity, both from the point of view of its structure, focused on the primary care of health, as in the quality of human resources it has.
The government’s will to put human life at the center of action
determine that from before the first cases were detected, on March 11, es
he designed a plan of confrontation that had, among other strengths, his own
interdisciplinarity and integration with science.
The result is a favorable handling of the epidemic, without the death of any child, mother or health personnel within those providing services in the country being mourned. Intensive care rooms also did not collapse, but an adequate scaling of healthcare institutions designed to care for patients, contacts and suspects was designed.
The country managed to raise its diagnostic capacity in record time and today has 18 Molecular Biology laboratories with a coverage for 15 thousand PCR per day. From March to date, 61 suspect care centers have been organized and put into operation, as well as 286 for contact surveillance and another 73 to isolate travelers.
Just 3.6% of the total number of people confirmed since the beginning of the epidemic have been treated in our Intensive Care Units and only 1.5% of the total number of patients have reached critical condition.
More than 870 researches have been generated at this stage, Many of them
born in hospitals, based on the experience and knowledge of industry professionals. Almost 200 are national in nature.
This practice helped to perfect care protocols for people
sick and convalescent, which already comes in six versions and is supported by numerous innovative Cuban products from the national biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, as well as research from other areas of knowledge, such as demography and genetics.
Today, 25 clinical trials are being carried out: 17 in progress and two completed. 10 authorizations have been granted by the National Regulatory Agency, five of them for Emergency Use, and six registrations of new drugs and Biotechnology products for use in COVID-19.
Four vaccine candidates were also born from this joint effort, which are in different phases of clinical trials, with encouraging results., Which places Cuba in the first country in Latin America to obtain such a result, as well as in the select group of 47 countries working to date to obtain an effective preventive vaccine against the SARS-CoV- virus. 2.
Sovereign vaccines are advancing significantly
Cuba shared these learnings in virtual international forums and workshops and
respond in addition to the request of several governments with the dispatch of 55 medical brigades from the Henry Reeve contingent, which fought COVID-19 in 40 countries and territories, with more than 4,700 Cuban health professionals.
They joined the professionals already serving in 59 nations
before the health emergency, which joined local efforts
against the new coronavirus.
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The delivery of Cuban doctors, who went to places where the pandemic hit hard, as is the case of the Italian regions of Lombardy and Piedmont, deserved international recognition, evidenced in the support of many personalities and organizations in the nomination to the Nobel Peace Prize, and the awarding of other prizes from the countries in which they offered their cooperation.
All this was done in the midst of the increase in the campaign of discredit against these collaborative programs, and the resurgence of the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the United States on the greater Antilles for almost 60 years.
Only in the period between April 2019 and March 2020, the US siege caused losses in the health sector valued at $ 160 million 260,880, not including the damage caused during the COVID-19 confrontation; stage in which Washington’s policy impacted on the acquisition of drugs, tickets, necessary equipment such as lung fans, and even hindered the arrival of aid from other countries.
The two pandemics in Cuba: The coronavirus and the US blockade
However, Cuba has not stopped any of its core health programs. The permanent development of human capital, the incorporation of new technologies, the results of science applied to major health problems; as well as intersectoral actions, contributed to maintain favorable indicators of the health status of the Cuban population, many of them at the level of developed countries.
Preliminary data from the Ministry of Public Health show that:
- The mortality rate from congenital malformations was reduced from 0.8 to 0.7, the lowest in history.
- The mortality rate from 1 to 4 years decreased from 3.6 to 2.8 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants (representing 40 fewer deaths in children of these ages).
- The mortality rate from 5 to 14 years decreased from 1.9 to 1.6 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants (with 36 fewer deaths) and the under-5 mortality rate decreased from 6.6-6 , 3 deaths per 1000 live births (with 67 fewer deaths than the previous year).
- Medical consultations in Primary Health Care increase from 31 million 316,442 in 2019 to 84 million 691,977 in 2020 (+375 thousand 535).
Despite the existing financial constraints, exacerbated by the economic crisis generated by COVID-19, the investment and maintenance program in the sector also remained active, favoring the revitalization of a large number of institutions.
In this way, 1863 family doctor’s offices and 280 polyclinics were constructively operated on.
The functioning of regionalized cancer care remained stable in the 45 medical oncology services, 25 nuclear medicine, nine radiotherapy and nine oncopediatrics.
As for rehabilitation services, 494,153 people were admitted and 412,470 were rehabilitated, for 83.5% of rehabilitated patients.
Investment in medical devices and equipment has also been a priority at this stage. 200 new high-performance lung fans have been delivered for ICUs throughout the country, which means that as a country we have reached an indicator of one fan for every 10,000 inhabitants.
During these ten months of pandemic, teaching activity, although readjusted to the conditions imposed by COVID-19, did not cease. Considering that human capital is one of the most precious riches, in the health sector, of the total of 11,848 Cuban professionals graduated in the different university degrees, 8950 correspond to Medicine, 1510 to Stomatology, 578 to Degree in Nursing and 810 in health technology.
More than 50,000 students participated in the active survey in the different communities ala COVID-19 i 19,482 to voluntary inquiries. Hundreds of these joined to work in isolation centers.
Many other indicators within the system reflect the impact of systematic work on the sector. For example:
- The mortality rate per 100,000 population is estimated to decrease for influenza and pneumonia, And chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract.
- The rate of premature mortality from 30 to 69 years of age decreased from 4.4 to 4.3 per 1,000 inhabitants.
- Medical care for respiratory infections will decrease from 82,308 in 2019-45,679 in 2020 (-36,000,629)
- Our country remains free of Zika, Chikungunya and Yellow Fever. They are reduced by 72.3% of Dengue cases compared to 2019 and by 6.2% Aedes aegypti mosquito foci.
- The rate of new HIV infections decreased to 19.4% compared to 2019. It also decreased AIDS mortality by 39%.
- Elimination indicators for maternal and child transmission of HIV and congenital syphilis are maintained. In this 2020, no children with HIV or cases of congenital syphilis have been reported.
The unquestionable quality of the health system, universal and free, and the
prestige achieved over the years and ratified in the midst of the crisis,
deserve that the country was elected a member of the Board of Directors of the
Pan American Health Organization, overcoming the negative campaign of
United States and pressures on other states.
In recent days, the Minister of Public Health, Dr. José Ángel Portal Miranda, at the event held at MINSAP by the 62nd Anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution noted:
“There are rights that often go unnoticed in everyday life, but once conquered, they save us in times like the ones we live in today.”
“Cuba has spent six decades building, perfecting, defending the right to health which is the right to life, six decades proving that an underdeveloped, small country can do science and make it of the highest quality.”
Without these premises, the minister reflected, how could Cuba have faced the health and social challenge that the pandemic caused by SARS-VOC-2 has imposed on us, has the confrontation demanded an extraordinary effort from the health sector?
“We can remember then 2020, as the year in which Cuba once again corroborated the importance of having placed, since the victory of January 1959, all its political will to train men and women of science, focused to the well-being of the people, by training doctors, technicians, stomatologists to bring medicine to every corner of the country and to the peoples of the world who have needed it and need it, by designing and consolidating a unique health system, free, universal and able to manage its own human resource needs, “said Portal Miranda.
Irrefutable certainties of the year ending. Reasons and reasons for a 2021 where the right to health remains an essential premise of the social and human work that the Cuban people have built.