By Ángel Guerra Cabrera on February 3, 2022
If Cuba can offer its vaccines at solidarity prices to low-income countries and even donate significant amounts in some cases, it is not only because of its recognized willingness to practice internationalism. That willingness is fundamental, but much more is needed.
Three examples: the island was the first country in the world to carry out universal vaccination against covid-19 in children over 2 years of age; the first to start a new school year with all schoolchildren immunized; preliminary studies by the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine in Havana on those vaccinated with the Cuban Soberana and Abdala biologics show that they have the capacity to generate antibodies against the omicron variant.
Specifically, in those vaccinated with the complete Soberana 02 and Abdala scheme, this could be seen in 90 percent or more of those immunized. In the case of those who received the booster with Soberana 01 and Abdala, this occurred in 100 percent of the cases studied. It should be recalled that in Cuba the complete scheme consists of three doses. Those who receive the first two doses of Soberana 02 are inoculated with Soberana Plus in the third dose.
The vaccines were conceived by scientists on the island with three doses because the need for a booster was already foreseen at that time. Thus, in Cuba, the current booster already applied to more than 4 million people corresponds to a fourth dose. Cuba has shown better results than many other countries against the Omicron variant and this is due to an escalated, accelerated and scientifically supervised vaccination strategy, which made it possible to immunize the vast majority of the population over 2 years of age and to massively apply the booster at the time when the number of infections was rising. It has also helped a lot that the island has not lifted the biosecurity measures from the very entrance to the country, as it has happened in other countries.
When the borders were recently opened to international tourism, a series of precautionary measures were applied, such as the requirement for those entering the country to have a 72-hour PCR and a full vaccination certificate. All these measures and many other very creative ones, with significant popular participation, explain why the island shows a lethality rate of 0.81 percent against 1.53 in the world and 1.86 in America. Furthermore, Cuba has 97.8 percent of recovered patients, higher than that of a list of selected countries. This data would not be possible if it were not for the existence of Cuba’s own protocols for treating covid patients, which include several drugs produced in the country.
This is obviously far from coincidental. It is mainly due to the existence of a recognized scientific capacity to create and produce safe immunogens of high efficacy and effectiveness on a considerable scale, and to the vast experience of a health system based on a robust primary level and on the participation of society. This, in turn, is supported by decades of accumulated experience in the production and application of biologics to Cubans to prevent various diseases.
Apart from the massive vaccination against covid-19 currently underway, an average of 4 million 800 thousand doses of immunogens, simple or combined, are applied every year in Cuba to protect against 13 diseases, including a pentavalent vaccine whose five components are produced in the country. Immunization, which has been completely free of charge since the early 1960s, reaches 98 percent of the child population. Cuba was the first country in the world to eliminate poliomyelitis, as a result of the vaccination campaigns started in 1962. It was also the first to meet, 19 years in advance, the World Health Organization’s goal of applying the anti-hepatitis B biologic 24 hours after birth; moreover, it did so with a national vaccine. This is not surprising, since the island has created, produced, applied to its infant population and exported a vaccine against meningococcal meningitis B and C, the first in the world effective against type B meningococcus. In 2003, it registered and marketed the chemically synthesized Quimi-Hib vaccine, the first of its kind in the world against Haemophilus influenzae type b. These, among other advances in biomedicine.
Mention should be made here of Fidel Castro’s vision to create very early on a free and universal health system with a strong preventive component and to have given enormous importance to founding a solid network of biomedical research centers. This display of humanism, creativity and solid science is a nightmare for Washington, which is determined to demonize Cuban medicine and doctors, but it will backfire.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English