Nothing and no one will prevent Cuba today from continuing to be “wherever help is asked of us and a human life needs it,” expressed Ambassador Yuri Gala upon reiterating here his country’s commitment to solidarity cooperation.

He recalled that since 1963 more than 605 thousand Cuban health collaborators have provided services in 165 countries and “we have contributed to the formation of tens of thousands of doctors from various countries of the South.”

When intervening in the debate on item 127 of the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly: “Global health and foreign policy,” Ambassador Gala ratified Cuba’s position in defence of health as a human right and not a commodity.

For over six decades, with great effort, the Cuban Government has implemented a universal and free public health system, based on prevention, equity and solidarity, he said.

He noted that this has occurred despite the devastating impact of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States, whose effects on the health sector are particularly visible and painful.

He denounced “the arbitrary inclusion of our country on the list of supposedly state sponsors of terrorism, and the discredit campaigns promoted by the United States against our medical services.”

Such a designation – Gala underscored – reinforces the criminal siege against Cuba and “affects the health and wellbeing of millions of people both in our country and in other latitudes.”

The Cuban representative indicated that global health cannot be separated from geopolitical tensions, humanitarian emergencies, climate change, nor from the unjust, exclusionary and unequal current economic order.

He insisted that international cooperation is essential to contribute to providing an effective response to global health emergencies and achieving true universal health coverage that benefits all people.

“Selfishness must be banished from international relations and unilateral coercive measures that negatively impact the enjoyment of the right to health must be eliminated,” he emphasised.

Ambassador Gala affirmed that countries of the South should not have to choose between paying the suffocating external debt or financing their national health systems.

“More mutual support is needed to achieve resilient, universal, humanist and sustainable health systems, which are not governed by market logic,” he noted.

Gala reiterated Cuba’s support for the World Health Organisation and rejected the unjustified attacks by the United States against this important organisation.