Richard raises some good questions. Let’s try to clarify further the objectives of the Canadian Network on Cuba’s fund drive.

The specific goal is to help pay some of the costs of Cuban emergency medical brigades that are now fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in 17 countries, saving many lives in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. The fund is not meant to subsidize Cuba’s entire health system and all of its ongoing international medical missions.

Also, the CNC fund drive, rather than only “asking solidarity activists to contribute money” or gathering “material aid from solidarity groups,” reaches out much more widely, appealing to new people and new forces.

The CNC statement reminds us of its previous organizing efforts along these lines. Its “Cuba for Haiti” campaign in 2010 “was warmly and enthusiastically received by Canadians. As Haitians struggled to recover from the devastating earthquake, more than $200,000 were raised to assist the Cuban medical mission in Haiti.”

Cuba’s current example demonstrating leadership and solidarity in the global fight against the new coronavirus is inspiring many people. And it is galvanizing the solidarity movement. The CNC fund appeal is responding to this reality and its new opportunities.

The fund-raising effort also has a vital political and educational component that is reflected in the CNC’s statement and our introduction to it. (Both appear in a previous post on this site.) This helps to engage wider forces, making it making it easier, not harder, to address other important issues like those that Richard mentions.

In fact, Isaac Saney, Co-chair of the CNC, recently explained demands that the CNC is now promoting, together with the U.S.-based National Network on Cuba, in a campaign for Canada and the United States to end all obstacles to medical collaboration with Cuba. Saney was a panelist at a webinar held on April 9, initiated by several Cuba solidarity organizations in the U.S., titled “Cuba Leads in Global Fight Against COVID-19.” The event attracted more than 600 participants from Cuba, the U.S., Canada, and other countries.

This new campaign is fully described at http://www.us-cubanormalization.org/viva-cuba. It seeks to win the support of medical personnel, unions, elected officials, and community, faith-based, and political organizations for:

• The U.S. and Canada to immediately lift any restrictions on access to Cuban medical expertise in order to more effectively combat COVID-19,

• The U.S. and Canada to conduct clinical trials of the Cuban-developed antiviral, Interferon Alfa 2B Recombinant (IFNrec, whose use in this pandemic has already been sought by 45 countries), and

• The U.S. to end its economic and travel sanctions against Cuba and their extraterritorial use, and end its attempts to stop other countries from accepting Cuban medical brigades.

I don’t think anyone is trying to disguise the fact that there will always be self-interested people who take all the money invested in them by the Cuban people to train a doctor, and try to cash it out on the market. Ironically, in many places like Canada, Cuban doctors would find that they are not allowed to practice because their credentials are foreign. However, the vast majority of Cuban doctors don’t leave because they don’t want to emigrate.

The problem with moving abroad of course is that it creates brain drain. What John did not say specifically, although I am sure he knows it, is that poor people in the US and other wealthy countries don’t get to become doctors because the schooling costs are astronomical. That’s why the Cuban model makes so much sense. Collective scarce resources are used to train doctors, doctors get enhanced salaries, and Cuba gets some of their training costs paid back by having doctors work abroad.

The ridiculous thing that is happening is that the US is actually complaining because Cuban doctors as individuals don’t get to keep all the money generated by the medical missions. In Cuba, the money the Cuban government gets goes back into the social well being of Cubans at large. The people who sacrificed so that medical training could be offered in the first place.

The US government also doesn’t offer poor US residents a free medical education, so it does not need to recoup those training costs. The US doesn’t spend administrative resources assembling medical brigades, transporting them and taking care of them, so it doesn’t need to recoup those costs. And of course, doctors in other countries pay major taxes, which is how many countries take a share of the income doctors generate, in addition to charging medical students an arm and leg for their own training. Cuban doctors don’t pay taxes.

Sorry for the long comment but your comment inspired me but to think through the collective vs individual benefits of the medical mission program. Does my comment make sense to you? Is there a way to state it more clearly? I would like to hear any thoughts on that. Thanks, Kat

Hi Richard, Kat Schulz here. I have started a letter writing campaign calling on the Canadian government to send aid to Cuba, so that Cuba can get its doctors where they are needed. I will sent it to you via email.