September 24, 2019–One day after the UN High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage–MEDICC Review presented its special issue, now online: Global South Contributions to Universal Health: The Case of Cuba.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez offered closing remarks at the event, held at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice and attended by representatives of medical associations, foundations, hospitals, clinics, health equity organizations, community groups and the media. “In Cuba’s health system, people aren’t clients–they are patients or healthy individuals whose well-being should be protected and promoted,” he said. “We live in a world that spends vast resources to develop weapons, to promote wars and patterns of consumerism for the few, depleting the sources of life on this earth. With a fraction of those resources, a bit less greed and a minimum of solidarity, the health problems–now condemning a great share of the world’s population–could be solved.” Also in attendance were Ana Silvia Rodríguez, Cuba’s Ambassador to the UN; José Cabañas, Cuba’s Ambassador to the US; and Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Director of the North America Division of the Cuban Foreign Ministry.
Also addressing the gathering was Dr. Rosie Mills, CEO of the William Hodson Community Center in The Bronx–the oldest senior center in the USA, and a leader in MEDICC’s Community Partnerships for Health Equity. “The Cuban model has inspired our communities to innovate for better health,” she noted. “Cuba has proved that so much can be accomplished by using available resources, and working together to educate, invigorate and encourage better health and equity!”
Jerrontay Foster, MEDICC’s Deputy Director, spoke on behalf of the journal´s publisher, based in Oakland, California: “I know we’re all here because we believe in extending the right to health care, and the value of cooperation. Cooperation is key to MEDICC’s work, and even though we’re a small non-profit, we believe we have punched above our weight in often hard times, to make cooperation possible. Cooperation for better health and health equity, among Cuban, US and global health and medical communities.”
Gail Reed, MEDICC Review Executive Editor, referred to the journal’s history as a peer-reviewed, open-access publication with a 50-member Editorial Board from 14 countries…now read in some 130 countries. She noted in her remarks that primary health care, solidarity and “the political will to make health a priority, even on a shoestring budget,” undergird Cuba’s public health approach. She called it a system that improves by constant self-critical, scientific evaluation of how to do things better, and emphasized that only global cooperation can ensure health care as a right in this world in which half the population has no access to essential health services.
