If we had to choose an idea that sums up what 2020 has meant for the Cuban public health sector, we could say It was the year in which the island’s health system survived a deadly pandemic without shutting down any of its essential services.
Every day of these ten long months, children were born, people with the most diverse pathologies had access to millions of medical consultations, patients with cancer and other diseases were operated on, many saw in a transplant the miracle of the second chance … I know it did not interrupt the immunization of children, 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 novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. But thousands more lives were saved. Those who escape the pandemic and are also part of the victory of these months.
Comprehensive health care in Cuba, life after the pandemic (+ Infographic and video)
Amid a complex global epidemiological scenario that still refuses to get rid of, and the pain of the more than 140 people who died in Cuba
for that disease, the Cuban health system has proven its validity, both from the point of view of the structure, focusing on primary care of health, as well as the quality of the human resources it has.
The government’s will to focus on human life
determined that since before the first cases were discovered, on March 11,
designed a confrontation plan that, among other strengths, are
interdisciplinarity and integration with science.
The result is favorable management of the epidemic, without regretting the death of a child, mother or health workers among those providing services in the country. The intensive care units did not collapse either, but rather an adequate scaling-up of care institutions was devised for the care of patients, contacts and suspects.
The country managed to increase its diagnostic capacity in record time and it is today 18 molecular biology laboratories with coverage for 15,000 PCRs per day. From March to date, 61 suspected care centers have been organized and put into operation, as well as 286 to monitor contacts and a further 73 to isolate travelers.
Only 3.6% of the total number of confirmed people since the onset of the epidemic have been treated in our intensive care units and only 1.5% of all patients have been critical.
More than 870 studies have been conducted at this stage, many of them
born in hospitals, based on the experience and knowledge of professionals in the sector. Nearly 200 are national in nature.
This practice has helped perfect human care protocols
sick and convalescent, which is already in six versions and supported by numerous innovative Cuban products from the national biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, as well as research from other areas of expertise, such as demographics and genetics.
Today 25 clinical studies are underway: 17 in progress and two completed. There are 10 authorizations 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 collaborative effort, who are in different phases of clinical trials, with encouraging results, making Cuba the first country in Latin America to achieve 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-2 virus.
Sovereign vaccines are advancing significantly
Cuba shared these lessons in virtual international forums and workshops and
It also responded to several governments’ requests with the Deployment of 55 medical brigades from the Henry Reeve contingent, which fought COVID-19 in 40 countries and territories, employing more than 4,700 Cuban health workers.
They joined the professionals already serving in 59 countries
before the health emergency, which joined the local efforts
against the new coronavirus.
VALIENTES: Lombardy and Havana, connected in the red zone (+ Photos and Video)
The birth of Cuban doctors, who went to places where the pandemic hit hard, such as the Italian regions of Lombardy and Piemonte, earned international recognition, as evidenced by the support of numerous personalities and organizations for the nomination of the Award. Nobel Peace Prize and the presentation of other prizes from the countries in which they offered their cooperation.
All of this was carried out amid the proliferation of the campaign to discredit these cooperative programs and the intensification of the economic, commercial and financial blockade that has imposed the United States on the largest of the Antilles for nearly 60 years.
Only in the period between April 2019 and March 2020, the US siege caused health sector losses of $ 160 million to $ 260,880, not including the damage caused in the confrontation with COVID-19; a phase when Washington’s policies affected the procurement of medicines, supplies and necessary equipment such as lung ventilators, and even hindered the arrival of aid from other countries.
The two pandemics in Cuba: the coronavirus and the United States blockade
Despite this, Cuba has not discontinued any of its basic health programs. The permanent development of human capital, the integration of new technologies, the results of science applied to the main health problems; as well as cross-sectoral 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 Health shows that:
- The death rate from birth defects fell from 0.8 to 0.7, the lowest in history.
- The mortality rate from 1 to 4 years fell from 3.6 to 2.8 deaths per 10,000 population (representing 40 fewer deaths in children of these ages).
- The mortality rate from 5 to 14 years fell from 1.9 to 1.6 deaths per 10,000 population (with 36 fewer deaths) and the mortality rate for children under 5 years of age fell from 6.6 to 6.3 deaths per 1,000 live births (with 67 fewer deaths than the year before).
- Medical consultations in primary health care have increased from 84 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 caused by COVID-19, the investment and maintenance program also remained active in the sector, promoting the revitalization of many institutions.
In this way, 1,863 GP and nursing offices and 280 outpatient clinics were intervened constructively.
The performance of regionalized cancer care remained stable in the 45 departments of medical oncology, 25 nuclear medicine, nine radiotherapy and nine oncopediatrics.
Regarding rehabilitation services, 494 153 people were admitted and 412 470 people rehabilitated, for 83.5% of the rehabilitated patients.
Investments in medical equipment and equipment have also been prioritized at this stage. 200 new high-performance lung ventilators have been delivered to ICUs across the national territory, which means that as a country we have an indicator of one ventilator for every 10,000 inhabitants.
During these ten months of pandemic, the educational activity, although adapted to the terms of COVID-19, did not end. Considering that human capital is one of the most valuable resources in the health sector, out of a total of 11,848 Cuban professionals who have graduated from various university careers, 8,950 correspond to medicine, 1,510 to stomatology and 578 to bachelor’s degrees. in nursing and 810 to health technology.
More than 50,000 students took part in the active research in the different communities ala COVID-19 and 19 482 in voluntary surveys. Hundreds of them went to work in isolation centers.
Many other indicators within the system reflect the impact of systematic work in the sector. For example:
- The death rate per 100,000 population is estimated to fall for influenza and pneumonia, and chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract.
- The premature death rate between the ages of 30 and 69 fell from 4.4 to 4.3 per 1,000 inhabitants.
- Medical care for respiratory infections decreased from 82,308 in 2019 to 45,679 in 2020 (-36,629)
- Our country remains free of Zika, Chikungunya and Yellow Fever. Dengue cases are reduced by 72.3% compared to 2019 and the foci of the Aedes aegypti mosquito by 6.2%.
- The number of new HIV infections decreased by 19.4% compared to 2019. Mortality from AIDS also decreased by 39%.
- Indicators for eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV and congenital syphilis remain. No children with HIV or cases of congenital syphilis were reported in 2020.
The indisputable quality of the universal and free health system, and the
prestige achieved over the years and reinforced during the crisis,
they deserved that the country was elected to the Board of Directors
Pan American Health Organization, who campaigned the negative
United States and press on other states.
In recent days, the Minister of Health, Dr. José Angel Portal Miranda, at the ceremony held in the Minsap by the 62 Anniversary of the triumph of the revolution stated:
“There are rights that often go unnoticed because they are mundane, but once they are conquered, they save us in moments like the ones we live in today.”
“Cuba has spent six decades building, perfecting and defending the right to health, which is the right to life, and six decades proves that a small, underdeveloped country can do science and it is of the highest quality.”
Without these premises, the minister thought, how could Cuba meet the health and social challenge posed by the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, whose confrontation has demanded an extraordinary effort from the health sector?
“We can then remember 2020, as the year in which Cuba reaffirmed the importance of having given all its political will to educating men and women in science, since the triumph of January 1959, for the well-being of the people. .; by training doctors, technicians and stomatologists to bring medicine to every corner of the country and to the peoples of the world who need and need it; through the conception and consolidation of a single, free, universal health system that is able to meet its own staffing needs, ”said Portal Miranda.
Irrefutable certainties for the year ending. Reasons and motives for a 2021 in which the right to health remains an essential foundation of the social and human work that has built the Cuban population.