Cuba has not been able to avoid the crowds during the pandemic. (Reference image: Cuban newspaper)
The Cuban government will request financial support from the Global Fund’s Response Mechanism to COVID-19, based in Geneva, Switzerland, and whose main donor is the United States.
Despite the fact that Cuba boasts of being a “medical power”, and that it has earned billions of dollars from the export of its health professionals, its own medical system is deplorable and lacks all kinds of services, medicines and supplies.
Thus, although there are countries that do need financial support due to lack of resources – such as much of Africa, India, and other Asian countries – Cuba intends to receive money to face the pandemic that it has denied since its inception, which it claims to have controlled , and for which it has not allocated a budget for dedicating it to other instances and not for lack of it.
According to the Diario de Cuba report, Maribel Gutiérrez, Cuban resident representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), confirmed the information.
Gutiérrez announced that the Cuban authorities are preparing this request for resources aimed at “controlling and containing Covid-19, mitigating the impact on the National Response to HIV and strengthening health and community systems.”
However, the regime has maintained for months the discourse that Cuba is a “safe country”, that its coronavirus cases are controlled, and that its medical care is “of the highest quality.”
At the same time, the request contrasts with the island’s refusal to be part of the Global Access Fund for Vaccines (COVAX) against the new coronavirus.
If the support is obtained, Cuba would receive financing of 500 million dollars to support the acquisition of diagnostic means and personal protective equipment, as well as other supplies for the emergency response, said the state company. Cuban News Agency (ACN).
The Global Fund’s main objective is to “accelerate the end of the AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics”, but in April 2020 it approved a response mechanism to also support countries in their fight against the pandemic.
Founded in 2002 in a public-private partnership, it has more than 1,000 initiatives in 151 countries and finances around a quarter of the programs to fight the aforementioned diseases.
The US Government is the most important donor, since it has given it more than 17,000 million dollars since its creation.
Just in March, the Fund thanked the Biden Administration for approving $ 3.5 billion earmarked for its effort to tackle Covid-19.
In that sense, receiving the money from the fund would basically be US financing, the accusation that the Cuban government maintains permanently against all its activists and dissidents, so, in theory, it should not be willing to receive the money.