ON THURSDAY a delegation from the Communist Party of Britain was received at Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health (Ministerio de Salud Publica) in Havana by Dr Henry Lopez Jimenez, Deputy Director of Public Health, a vetaran of Cuba’s Medical Brigades in Mozambique where he worked at the Central Hospital in Nampula.

The CPB delegation was led by general secretary Alex Gordon and party chair Lorraine Douglas and included Ben Woodward who is in Havana as part of a brigade organised by the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP), the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.

Dr Henry Lopez Jimenez outlined the extreme privations that have been created in Cuba’s world renowned health system as a result of the US blockade and sanctions regimes.

Cuba’s infant mortality rate has increased as a direct consequence of the cruel and deliberate attack by the Trump administration on the Cuban people’s healthcare system. Cuban surgeons and nurses have been forced to complete medical operations using light from their own mobile phones during power cuts.

The CPB delegation presented the Cuban health service with over £2,000 of medicines including analgesic painkillers, anti-inflamatory tablets and other medical aid, an advance donation from the Aid for Cuba appeal recently launched by the CPB, which raised £32,000.

Gordon told Cuban health officials: “The world looks in wonder and admiration at the immense health care achievements of the Cuban people’s revolution. Now the Trump regime’s medical blockade is causing what President Miguel Diaz Canal recently called ‘collective punishment which already has the character of genocide’.”

“The Communist Party of Britain and the Co-ordinating Committee of Communist Parties in Britain have declared our solidarity with Cuba’s socialist path and are determined to provide the support that Cuba needs at this time of criminal war on her people by US imperialism.

“The people of Britain stand by Cuba. Britain’s communists stand by Cuba’s socialist and sovereign revolution,” Gordon told the Cuban health ministry officials.

Last month, Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz Canel told representatives of solidarity movements from the United States, Spain, Australia, and various African nations: “Being in Cuba today is an act of bravery, it is an act of courage.”

The world needs to show Cubans that since they are not afraid, neither are we. We will deliver the material and political solidarity that Cubans demand and need. Viva Cuba!