Cuban sectors denounce impact of U.S. blockade

HAVANA, Cuba, Nov 2 (ACN) Representatives of the health, energy and banking sectors denounced the effects of U.S. blockade on their fields and how much it harms the Cuban people in statements made on the occasion of the beginning Wednesday of the first debates on the draft resolution "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba" at the United Nations General Assembly.

Mayda Mauri Pérez, vice-president of the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industry Business Group (BioCubaFarma), said that this U.S. Cuba policy is the main cause of the shortage of medicines in the country and a major obstacle to the expansion of the biopharmaceutical industry as suppliers and clients find it increasingly harder to keep doing business with Cuba.

Mauri Pérez referred to her enterprise’s inability to buy consumables and equipment in the U.S. market, Cuba’s closest market and producer of everything that the Cuban biopharmaceutical industry needs, which in turns affects the American people, who would otherwise have access to unique Cuban medicines such as Heberprot-P to treat diabetic foot ulcer therapy.

Other obstacles facing Cuba are the rising prices that importing medical supplies from distant countries entails and the refusal of the U.S. government to sell medical oxygen and pulmonary ventilators to treat COVID patients in the island.

As to the energy sector, the blockade has fallout on the purchase of indispensable goods to keep the power grid on the go, including fuel and other resources to prevent the blackouts that cause so much discontent among the Cubans.

On her end, Suleidy Tosca Arencibia, general director of Banco Internacional de Comercio S.A., said that the Cuban banking system has difficulties to pay the salaries to Cubans working abroad because some banks refuse to work with third parties to carry out financial operations.

In the course of the 14 months of the U.S. government headed by Democrat Joe Biden, the blockade has caused Cuba more than six billion dollars in losses.