Access to basic health services is today a pipe dream for much of the world, despite the universal recognition of health as a fundamental human right.
In 2019, prior to the pandemic, 32 percent of the world’s population lacked access to essential health services according to two complementary reports published by the World Health Organization and the World Bank on December 12, 2021, on the occasion of the Universal Health Coverage Day.
Added to this reality are the people who spend more than 10 percent of family income on payment for health services, whose number went from 579 to 996 million between 2000 and 2017, according to the 2021 edition of the “Monitoring Universal Health Coverage ” prepared by both organizations.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the world was a long way from achieving goal 3.8 of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, aimed at achieving universal health coverage, he noted, and the additional goal of incorporating one billion more people in that category by 2023, that study said.
The health emergency, the report said, has caused significant disruptions in the provision of essential health services, while growing poverty and declining incomes are sure to increase financial barriers to accessing paid care.
In this gloomy panorama, Cuba shines with its free, universal, quality and efficacy national health system demonstrated for years and more recently in the confrontation with Covid-19 with medicines, its own vaccines and the hand extended to other countries.
The level reached by the island in these fields is more commendable considering its condition as a small country subjected for more than sixty years to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States.
Inspired by this example, the San Ambrosio Confraternity Cultural Association, an organization based in the Italian city of Milan, awarded the Medal of Merit, in its Gold class, to the International Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Situations of Disasters and Serious Epidemics “Henry Reve.”
In statements to Prensa Latina, the president of that organization, Guido Broic, praised the achievements of the Cuban health system.
The first thing we must underline is that the health of all peoples and individuals is not a negotiable good nor should it be at the service of decisions of any kind, but rather an inalienable right, he said.
Here in Italy, he said, we had the pleasure and benefit of counting, immediately, at the beginning of the very serious Covid-19 pandemic, on the direct, disinterested, free help of the Henry Reeve Contingent.
People always talk about the fact that health costs and that there are economic reasons for health, but I would like to underline that Cuba, a country hit by a blockade for decades, has indicators at the same level as those of European countries, Boich stressed.
