In greater and greater numbers, U.S. citizens and institutions are condemning the continued U.S. embargo against Cuba, particularly now that the U.S. has lifted the embargo against Vietnam and granted most favored nation trading status to communist China. Regardless of what one thinks of U.S. policy toward Cuba in general, there is one aspect of the embargo that is particularly abhorrent -- the ban on trade in food and medicines. Depriving a people of food and medicine is an inhumane and unacceptable tactic of U.S. foreign policy.
Global Exchange, with the support of major sustainable development and health and nutrition-focused organizations, launched a campaign in 1995 to pressure the U.S. government to exempt food and medicines from the trade embargo of Cuba. The Food and Medicine Campaign promotes Cuba's right to trade with U.S. companies for food, medicines and other commodities essential for health.
The U.S. Trade Embargo of Cuba is the longest and most severe embargo by one state against another in modern history. The unilateral embargo has been in effect since 1961, although Cuba had been allowed to trade with subsidiaries of U.S. companies in third countries from 1975 until the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act in 1992. Over 90 percent of this subsidiary trade was in food and medicines. Then the 1996 Helms-Burton Act codified the embargo -- formerly a collection of Executive Orders -- making it against U.S. law for US. agricultural and pharmaceutical companies to trade with Cuba. Now an Act of Congress is required to rescind even this aspect of the embargo.
Legislation to exempt food and medicine from the embargo is being introduced in the House of Representatives this session and in the Senate. Please help us to pass these bills by asking your congressional representative and senators to add their names to the list of cosponsors.
FOOD: Since the fall of the Soviet bloc, Cuba has gone from a society whose main nutritional problem was obesity to a society with food shortages. In the early 1990's, caloric intake plunged by one third, leading to a variety of heretofore unknown disorders, including a serious nutrition-related neurological disease that affected tens of thousands of Cubans and left over 200 permanently blind. A surge in anemia among pregnant women; and a rise in low birth weight babies were also experienced during this period. While many point to Cuba's dependence on the socialist bloc for the bulk of its food imports as a factor that led to the food crisis, few know that the United States intentionally exploited Cuba's increasing dependence on food imports from U.S. subsidiaries following the collapse of the socialist bloc by passing the Torricelli Act. In 1992 for instance, at the height of the crisis, the U.S. government threatened U.S. subsidiaries in Argentina, Cargill SACI and Compania Continental CACINF, with sanctions, and blocked the export to Cuba of $100,000,000 worth of wheat, soy, peas, and lentils.
MEDICINE: As recently as 1989, the Cuban health care system was extolled by the World Health Organization as a model for the world. But the almost four decade-old embargo has driven the prices of imported medicines and vitamins well beyond the reach of the Cuban economy, has prevented Cuba from gaining access to essential spare parts for life-saving medical equipment and has eroded the country's capacity for manufacturing its own medical products, resulting in a rapid decline in the Cuban health care system.
Mortality rates for people 65 and older have risen, deaths from easily treatable afflictions such as pneumonia and influenza have increased sharply, as have the number of fatal infectious diseases. Declining access to clean water also contributed to an increase in diarrheal disease mortality among the general population to 6.8 per 1,000 from 2.7.
Similar to the situation with food imports, the U.S. aggressively pursued a policy of preventing U.S. subsidiaries from exporting medical supplies to Cuba. The products kept from reaching Cuba included radiographic material, operating room equipment, dialysis equipment, respiratory equipment, pacemakers, ultrasound equipment, and most dramatically, insulin (Eli Lily, a U.S. company, has a near monopoly world-wide), and asparaginase and dornase, the most effective drugs in the treatment of children with leukemia and cystic fibrosis respectively, which are only manufactured in the United States.
U.S. owned companies increasingly dominate the world market in medicines and medical equipment, making it increasingly difficult for Cuba to obtain the medical supplies it needs. 50% of all new world class drugs developed between 1972 and 1992 are manufactured or patented in the U.S. While the Helms Burton Act contains a passage that allows U.S. companies to apply for licenses to export medical supplies to Cuba, the process is so confusing and cumbersome that few companies are willing to initiate it.
In addition, the Torricelli Act forbids ships that dock in Cuban ports from docking in U.S. ports for six months before or after. Many shippers that had traditionally docked in Cuba have changed their routes, resulting in shipping cost increases of some 30%.
In the Congressional debate during consideration of the Helms-Burton Bill in early 1996, U.S. legislators claimed that private groups in the United States provided Cuba with more humanitarian aid than any other country in the world. While this may be true, that aid accounts for only about 10% of the trade in food and medicines lost due to the Torricelli Act. Aid does not and never will be a viable replacement for trade.
We can't afford to wait for the U.S. government to lift the whole embargo before taking drastic action on behalf of the health needs of the Cuban people. We declare, along with United Nations officials, "No nation on earth has the right to destroy the system of health and nutrition Cuba has set up to provide for the needs of its children."
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