I AM proud to be speaking at the Hands Off Cuba rally and fundraiser on September 28 at The Casa in Liverpool. Alongside the Cuban ambassador, parliamentary colleagues and friends from across the labour movement, we’ll be raising funds to send life-saving medical aid to Cuba and speaking in defence of Cuba’s remarkable medical internationalism.

As a small developing nation, which, like so many in the global South, has had to wrestle with the legacies of colonialism, Cuba’s achievements in health have long stood as a beacon of hope for millions. 

In 2014, an article published in the Lancet Medical Journal argued that “if the accomplishments of Cuba could be reproduced across a broad range of poor and middle-income countries, the health of the world’s population would be transformed.”

By building a health system that prioritises prevention and social responsibility, Cubans have long enjoyed some of the best health indicators in the hemisphere despite the extreme restrictions imposed on them by the US blockade. Not just that, they have shared their expertise and sent their health workers to poorer nations in the Americas, Africa and Asia, bettering the lives of millions in the process.

However, these achievements are under direct assault by the Trump administration. By callously turning the screw and intensifying the 63-year-old blockade to new levels, the gains the revolution has made in health, both at home and abroad, are under threat.

Cuba’s annual report on the impact of the blockade, published last week ahead of the UN general assembly vote in October on the necessity of ending the blockade, demonstrated its impact on Cuba’s public health system.

From the cancellation of contracts to the refusal of shipping companies to transport cargo to Cuba, the blockade severely hampers the island’s health system and caused losses of nearly $290 million in the 12 months covered by the report. The impact on Cuba’s most vulnerable was laid bare. 

During that period, the first cause of death in children under the age of one was due to congenital disorders. Cuba faces severe limitations in the resources necessary to both diagnose and treat such conditions. Difficulties in acquiring the medicines used to treat childhood haematological cancers have forced Cuba to modify its treatment schemes. Without the preferred medicines at Cuba’s disposal, survival rates have dropped from 75 per cent to 60 per cent. 

These are not just statistics. They represent a tragic increase in preventable deaths and suffering. With shortages crippling the health sector, our solidarity is crucial.

The Cuba Vive appeal was launched in 2024 by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and Unison North West to provide this much-needed practical solidarity. It has since raised nearly £200,000, with support from Unison, Unite, NEU, Aslef, POA, FBU and Equity, alongside nine more Unison regions and many more union regions and branches up and down the country. 

The appeal has already sent four shipping containers full of aid worth more than £1 million to Cuba. Catheters, tracheostomy equipment, syringes and needles, colostomy bags, operating theatre supplies and much more are now being put to use in hospitals across the island and are saving lives. More containers are being sent this autumn.

This act of international solidarity represents the best of our movement and mirrors the Cubans’ own commitment to sharing what it has with those overseas. 

While the US government bankrolls Israel as it commits genocide in Gaza, Cuba is training hundreds of Palestinian medical students for free. These Palestinians are just some of the many thousands of students from the global South training to become doctors in Cuba on fully funded scholarships. 

The priorities of the US and Cuba couldn’t be expressed in clearer terms. 

But it is not just with the training of health workers that Cuba puts its internationalist principles into practice. Over the past 60 years, more than half a million Cubans have served in medical missions abroad. Working in more than 164 countries, they have provided assistance during health crises, natural disasters and have helped to build the health infrastructure many poorer nations lack, especially some of Cuba’s closest neighbours in the Caribbean. 

This year, the US government has fixed its sights on these medical co-operation programmes. By peddling the lurid falsehood that Cuba’s health workers are victims of “human trafficking,” they have threatened officials who participate in these humanitarian programmes with travel restrictions. 

Leaders in the Caribbean fought back when the policy was announced. “We could not get through the pandemic without the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors,” said Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados. “What the Cubans have been able to do for us, far from approximating itself to human trafficking, has been to save lives and limbs and sight of many a Caribbean person.”

Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, asked: “Does anyone expect that, because I want to keep my US visa, I’m going to let 60 poor, working-class people die? That will never happen.”

And yet the US persists in targeting Cuba’s internationalism, cynically seeking to deter South-South co-operation and isolating the island further. Under threat of sanctions, the Bahamas has cancelled its agreement with Cuba and, in August, the State Department announced visa restrictions and revocations for officials from Africa, Grenada and Brazil.

The Cubans’ commitment to the health and dignity of people across the world remains an inspiration. As the US persists with its policy of economic warfare, causing unnecessary suffering for Cubans and threatening their humanitarian projects elsewhere, join me in Liverpool on September 28 to show your solidarity and your support for the appeal. 

Richard Burgon MP for Leeds East will be speaking at the Hands Off Cuba Rally and Fundraiser on September 28 from 5.30pm at The Casa in Liverpool. Details can be found at www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/events