The poor of the world are the victims of imperial anti-Cuban hostility

 HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 26 (ACN) In an escalation of its hostile Cuba policy, the U.S. government is targeting the island's international health cooperation services, a humanist program promoted by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro since the beginning of the Revolution.

The most recent measure announced by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, known for defending the policy of maximum pressure against Cuba, would also affect tens of thousands around the world who benefit from the solidarity of Cuban health professionals.

In a post on X last Tuesday, Cuban Minister of Foreign Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla denounced that the "suspension of visas associated with international medical cooperation agreements of Cuba is the seventh unjustified attack against our people in a month".

In this regard, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez urged the U.S. State Department to explain to the American people and the international community how its attacks against Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions in dozens of countries depends, do credit to their country.

According to official data from the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, more than 600,000 Cuban aid workers have provided health care services in 165 countries since 1963―when Cuba’s international solidarity work began in Algeria―with more than 24,000 medical professionals currently deployed in 56 countries, most of them in the global south, where they mainly serve low-income families in far-away locations.

However, the U.S. Secretary of State used ungrounded pretexts of labor export and forced labor to try to justify Washington's decision to increase restrictions on the issuance of visas to Cuban and third-country government officials engaged in these solidarity programs.
Josefina Vidal, deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, described the U.S. measure as brazen and stressed that Marco Rubio is not at all interested in the welfare and health of the Cuban people or that of millions around the world, whom he intends to deprive of basic medical services in his unhealthy eagerness to punish Cuba.

On her end, Johana Tablada de la Torre, deputy director of the U.S. General Division of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, dismantled the imperial rhetoric by assuring that Cuba's medical programs in the world are in line with the United Nations schemes for South-South cooperation and ratified that they do not have any of the characteristics that define an exploitation or human trafficking operation.

Since last January, when Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States for the second time, he made clear his intention to reinforce the 60-plus year-old U.S. blockade and started by reinstating Cuba on the list of alleged state sponsors of terrorism without any argument to justify such hostility.