Cuba leads fight against Ebola in Africa as west frets about border security

[Judi Lynn]

Cuba leads fight against Ebola in Africa as west frets about border security

The island nation has sent hundreds of health workers to help control the deadly infection while richer countries worry about their security – instead of heeding UN warnings that vastly increased resources are urgently needed

Monica Mark in Lagos
The Observer, Saturday 11 October 2014

As the official number of Ebola deaths in west Africa’s crisis topped 4,000 last week – experts say the actual figure is at least twice as high – the UN issued a stark call to arms. Even to simply slow down the rate of infection, the international humanitarian effort would have to increase massively, warned secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

“We need a 20-fold resource mobilisation,” he said. “We need at least a 20-fold surge in assistance – mobile laboratories, vehicles, helicopters, protective equipment, trained medical personnel, and medevac capacities.”

But big hitters such as China or Brazil, or former colonial powers such France and the UK, have not been stepping up to the plate. Instead, the single biggest medical force on the Ebola frontline has been a small island: Cuba.

That a nation of 11 million people, with a GDP of $6,051 per capita, is leading the effort says much of the international response. A brigade of 165 Cuban health workers arrived in Sierra Leone last week, the first batch of a total of 461. In sharp contrast, western governments have appeared more focused on stopping the epidemic at their borders than actually stemming it in west Africa. The international effort now struggling to keep ahead of the burgeoning cases might have nipped the outbreak in the bud had it come earlier.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/cuba-leads-fights-against-ebola-africa

[pangaia]

1. Just can't trust those communists, can we.

GOOD for CUBA !
I hope they stay safe.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. this is why we blockade them, they do horrible shit like this. nt.

[Worried senior]

3. We never seem to

hear about this on MSM.

[swilton]

4. Richard Wolff

pointed this out in his monthly update which I saw yesterday.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017220079

Apparently, Cuban medical assistance to Venezuela was critical to Chavez administration's program on poverty.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Cuban Assistance Programs Disprove the Myth of American Exceptionalism

Cuban Assistance Programs Disprove the Myth of American Exceptionalism

by Matt Peppe / October 11th, 2014


In the wake of the Ebola outbreak in Africa, President Barack Obama has misrepresented the response of the Empire he leads as another example of American “exceptionalism.” The fantasy that U.S. leaders have drilled into the public is that the United States is the one indispensable nation, and its people are uniquely exceptional, leading the rest of the world in the battle for justice and peace. Obama blusters about the remarkable leadership the United States in providing in its response to the Ebola crisis. Meanwhile Cuba, as usual, has been at the forefront of containing and treating the disease, doing the work the United States claims to be doing without seeking the credit.

Obama recently told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes that: “America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us. That’s the deal.” Obama’s words echo Hillary Clinton, who earlier this summer told Terri Gross on Fresh Air: “the United States is the indispensable nation.”

Presumably Obama is not referring to the millions of people who marched against the United States illegal and immoral war in Iraq in 2003, what Time called “by some accounts the largest single coordinated protest in history,” when “roughly 10 million to 15 million people.. assembled and marched in more than 600 cities.” He is right in one sense. People did call on Washington — to stop their plans for criminal aggression. As usual, the world was ignored.

Neither was Obama presumably referring to the latest Win/Gallup International poll in 2013 that found “the US is widely regarded as posing the greatest threat to peace.” So much so, in fact, that people in 65 countries across the globe believed the US was three times more dangerous to peace than the next country. This poll is not an outlier; the results are consistent year after year.

More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/cuban-assistance-programs-disprove-the-myth-of-american-exceptionalism/