'Historic Turning Point': Cuba Issues Plan for Vaccine Internationalism

[Judi Lynn]

Progressive International's general coordinator David Adler (L) and Dr. Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director general of the Finlay Institute of Vaccines, talk during a press conference at the Finlay Institute in Havana, on January 24, 2022. (Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)

"This lifesaving package," said the head of Progressive International's delegation to Cuba, exemplifies public health and science being "placed above private profit and petty nationalism."

KENNY STANCIL

January 25, 2022

At a Tuesday press conference convened by Progressive International, individuals from Cuba's medical community explained their plan to deliver 200 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to low-income nations in the Global South—along with technology to enable domestic production and expert support to improve distribution.

"Today's announcements by Cuban scientists should mark a historic turning point in the history of the Covid-19 pandemic," David Adler, general coordinator of the Progressive International (PI) and head of its delegation to Cuba, said in a statement. "This lifesaving package sets the standard for vaccine MoDespite the added challenges imposed by a six-decade-long U.S. embargo—including syringe shortages and blocked solidarity donations—Cuba's public biotech sector has developed two highly effective Covid-19 vaccines and its universal healthcare system has fully inoculated over 86% of its population.

Representatives of the Cuban government said Tuesday that the Caribbean island has obtained enough funding from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration to manufacture 200 million doses. According to Dr. Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director general of the Finlay Institute of Vaccines, "They could produce 120 million doses in one year alone."

Not content to simply export its homegrown jabs, Cuba plans to take the following additional steps to ensure that these doses—and possibly millions more—make their way into the arms of people living in impoverished nations forsaken by Big Pharma and wealthy governments:

• Solidarity prices for Covid-19 vaccines for low-income countries;
  
• Technology transfer where possible for production in low-income countries; and
  
• Extending medical brigades to build medical capacity and training for vaccine distribution in partner countries.

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/25/historic-turning-point-cuba-issues-plan-vaccine-internationalism

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[msongs]

1. sounds like a socialist/communist plot to discredit vaccines nt

[Judi Lynn]

2. They've been making drugs and sharing them with impoverished countries for ages.

It has been discussed in international media repeatedly. It didn't start with Covid-19.

They have gained a distinguished reputation in creating their own vaccines for their own citizens because the country hasn't been able to buy badly needed drugs or medical equipment from the US or companies in other countries which do business with the US due to the US embargo on Cuba, recognized everywhere by people who bother to learn, as the world's harshest, longest economic war on another country.

Cuba has been impoverished since the revolution, and Eisenhower kicked the embargo off since before John F. Kennedy was elected.

~ ~ ~

FALL 2016 THE POLITICS OF THE U.S. TRADE EMBARGO OF CUBA, 1959-1977

The Politics of the U.S. Trade Embargo of
Cuba, 1959-1977
David W. Dent And Carol O’Brien

Techniques of economic reward and punishment have played a key role in the politics of
Cuban-American relations since the early part of the twentieth century.1 Once Cuba was
separated from Spanish colonial rule, the interests of the United states gradually developed into a
“special relationship” where Cuban political and economic life were tied very closely to the
American system. This close relationship was a partial contributor to the Castro revolution that
began in 1959 with the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. The closest links were clearly in the
areas of trade and investment. As Blasier points out, prior to the Cuban Revolution:

The United States brought about two-thirds of Cuba’s exports and paid, under the quota
system, large premiums, sometimes approaching nearly twice the world-market price for
Cuban sugar. In exchange, Cuba offered the United States tariff preferences, which was
only one of several reasons why the United States sold Cuba nearly 70 percent of its
imports. United States interests controlled a declining, but still large, percentage (about
40 percent) of raw sugar production, 90 percent of telephone and electric services, and 50
percent of public service railroads. In addition, U.S. banks had about 25 percent of all
bank deposits in the nation.2

Thus, the sweet sugar quota and the deeply entrenched economic interests of the United States
set the stage for the instruments of foreign policy that would be employed to respond to Castro’s
revolution as it began to take shape after 1959. Although certainly other instruments (unilateral
and multilateral) of foreign policy were devised and implemented to strangle the Cuban economy
and thereby discredit the Cuban Revolution, the trade embargo formed the core of retaliatory
action toward Cuba from 1960 to the present day. The purpose of this paper will be to examine
the rationale and effectiveness of a policy of economic coercion that has been in operation for
almost twenty years.

The length of time that the United States has sought to discredit the Castro regime and the
ineffectiveness of the policy of economic denial would seem to point to underlying motives that
go beyond the mere threat to billions of dollars of U.S. private investment. Nevertheless, six
American presidents have treated Castro’s Revolution with the same suspicion, ideological
resentment, and fear even though the politics of hostility between Cuba and the United States has
been toned down considerably. Even the American press has more recently shown a more
favorable image of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution.3 The underlying hypothesis of this
paper is that American foreign policy objectives in dealing with Fidel Castro were essentially
political and not economic. That is, the economic instruments of foreign policy designed to
choke the Cuban economy were intended to meet specific political-security objectives rather than
strictly economic motives. Thus, the Cuban trade embargo was designed and implemented by the
United States to weaken the Castro regime, contain the spread of Castroism, and loosen the ties
with the Soviet Union.

More:
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2017/11/POLITICS-OF-US-TRADE-EMBARGO-WITH-CUBA-1cd8yqu.pdf

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Oh my, people not supporting multi-billion dollar Big Pharm.

Cuba is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world. They even have developed one for lung cancer, CIMAvax.

[Judi Lynn]

4. So glad to see your post! It reminded me I had heard of CIMAvax, previously.

Found some interesting information:

A Souvenir Smuggled Home From Cuba: A Cancer Vaccine

CimaVax-EGF is a vaccine used to treat cancer, specifically non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). CIMAvax-EGF is composed of recombinant human epidermal growth factor (EGF) conjugated to a protein carrier.[1]

The vaccine was developed by the Center of Molecular Immunology, Havana, Cuba.[2][3] There are agreements in place to test it in the United States, Japan, and some European countries.[4] It is currently available in Cuba, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru and Paraguay.[5] In October 2015 Serbia's Institute of Virology, Vaccines and Sera (AKA Torlak Institute) signed a memorandum for use in 30 patients as part of a study.[6] CimaVax is relatively cheap to produce and store, and has low toxicity.[4] Side effects of the vaccine appear to be mild, and include chills, fever, and feeling sick.[7][8]

Mechanism
CimaVax is an active vaccine with which patients are immunized with epidermal growth factor (EGF), thus raising antibodies targeting EGF itself. The product is also formulated with the Neisseria meningitidis outer protein P64k and Montanide ISA 51 as adjuvants to potentiate the immune response.[9][8] The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is hijacked by many types of cancer, including cancers of the lung, colon, kidney, and head and neck. By raising antibodies against EGF, which is EGFR's major ligand, the concentrations of EGF in the blood are reduced. Thus CimaVax does not target the cancer cells directly, but is expected to work against these cancers by denying the cancers the growth stimulus they require.[8][10] For this reason, the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center group thinks that it may prove most useful as a preventive vaccine rather than as a cancer therapy per se.[4]

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CimaVax-EGF

~ ~ ~

Unbounded Innovation

Roswell Park’s Cuban Collaboration

Through an historic partnership with Cuba’s Centro de Inmunología Molecular, or CIM, Roswell Park is helping to develop several innovative and potentially life-saving cancer therapies. The first of these new approaches to be available to U.S. patients is CIMAvax-EGF®, an immunotherapy for lung cancer. We are the only facility in the country that offers this groundbreaking treatment.

More:
https://www.roswellpark.org/cimavax

~ ~ ~

Meningitis B:

Cuba produces synthetic meningitis vaccine
Thu, Nov 27, 2003, 00:00

Cuban researchers have developed the first synthetic vaccine against a bacteria that causes pneumonia and meningitis in a breakthrough aimed at lowering the cost of immunising children in poorer countries.

. . .

"It took us six years," said Dr. Vicente Verez, head of the University of Havana's Synthetic Antigens Laboratory. "But what could be more precious for society than to have healthy two-month-old babies," he said. Poor nations that depend on multinational pharmaceutical companies for the vaccine - now costing $3 a dose - will now have a less expensive alternative, Dr Verez said.

The disease has been almost erased in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said. But it remains a problem in developing countries where the cost of the vaccine has been a barrier to widespread immunisation.

Clinical trials conducted in Cuba showed a 99.7 percent success rate in developing the required antibodies. The technology for the new vaccine was patented in 1999 by the University of Ottawa and the University of Havana.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/cuba-produces-synthetic-meningitis-vaccine-1.962655