By Alejandra Garcia on May 24, 2022 from Havana
Puentes de Amor
Of all, Cuba’s health sector is the area hardest hit by the blockade that the United States insists on maintaining against the island. For two years, the country has not been able to start the liver transplant program for children, due to the lack of a key component that Washington refused to sell to the country. But miracles do happen, and every day friends around the world prove to us that we are not alone.
This week, members of the solidarity project Puentes de Amor made up of Cuban emigrants, traveled to the Caribbean country and delivered to the William Soler Pediatric Hospital a part of the chemical compound needed to reactivate the transplant program. From this week on, many of the children who were waiting for a new liver will have hope again.
“Today, we took the first step. We will send all the medical material necessary to save the lives of Cuban children,” project coordinator Carlos Lazo said on his Facebook account.
For Cubans, this is not news. We know that this aid came about by an indispensable support network that has been by our side in the most difficult moments. For months and years, Bridges of Love, and the members of other solidarity movements, have been defying the blockade and Washington’s attempts to isolate us from other countries. They risk everything to make Cuba sanction-free.
Even though we are used to these gestures of solidarity, the Cuban people were overwhelmed by this particular donation. “This gesture of altruism breaks the obstacles imposed on our public health by the U.S. blockade, which makes access to supplies and medicines more expensive or prevents us from acquiring technologies with U.S.-origin components,” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said.
“Bridges of Love brings hope to Cuban children who are victims of the senselessness of a criminal and inhumane blockade. The movement gives dreams back to families waiting for a new organ for their children,” he added.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel also thanked the gesture. “Carlos Lazo and his Bridges of Love in Cuba confirms that love overcomes hate. Solidarity is the most beautiful act of love for humanity.”
The support to Cuba will continue next weekend, when the Cuban emigrants who make up the Antonio Maceo Brigade and Bridges of Love will go out in a caravan against the blockade through the streets of Miami, Florida they will be accompanied by many others who stand with Cuba. The event will take place this Sunday and will mark the 23rd consecutive month that the caravan has taken place. There is no doubt that their message is having an impact as right wing Cuba personalities try to whip up a hateful counter demonstration.
“These are moments of unity and immediate relief to the Cuban people who suffer every day the consequences of that cruel and inhuman genocidal policy imposed on the island by Washington’s consecutive administrations for more than six decades,” the organizers of the event said.
During the mobilization donations will be accepted to help replenish those supplies used by Cuban doctors to treat the victims of the Saratoga Hotel accident.
It was the Trump Administration that reinforced the siege against Cuba with 243 additional measures, a good part of them adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic but it has been Biden who assumed the same stance against the island since he moved into the White House in January 2021.
Last week, the Biden Administration announced a series of limited measures lifting some restrictions imposed during the Trump era; however, the blockade remains entrenched and immovable. But the Cuba Solidarity Movement in the US and around the world has shown over and over again they feel this island as their own and will not rest until we break down all the barriers that prevent the development of Cuba.
This critical delivery of the chemical compound needed to restart the children liver transplant program is a vivid example that, on this island that never gives up; we know we shall never be alone.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English