U.S. blockade hampers Cuban gastroenterology

HAVANA, Cuba, Apr 12 (ACN) The impossibility of purchasing antivirals for the hepatitis C patients such as Zepatier and Combo Abbie, patented by the U.S. pharmaceutical laboratory Gileat, is one of the effects of the blockade of Cuba in the Havana Institute of Gastroenterology.

Cuba’s most recent report the United Nations General Assembly calling for an end to the intensified siege states that this institution of the Ministry of Public Health lacks diagnostic kits in the area of Immunology to detect autoimmune diseases because they are covered by U.S. patents.

Doctor and Master of Science Caridad Ruenes Domech, director of the Institute of Gastroenterology, told CAN that this genocidal policy also hinders the repair of Olympus endoscopy equipment and the production of the Heberfast line anti-transglutaminase diagnostic substance, very important for the detection of celiac disease, whose components are supplied by MDI, the usual U.S. supplier. Since MDI has not responded to our requests, we have been forced to rely on intermediaries and therefore pay higher prices and suffer delays, she stressed. “On an academic level, Cuba-U.S. States meetings on Hepatology and Inflammatory Bowel Disease, which had been planned online, were cancelled.”

“Another problem is the great difficulty to buy special detergents to clean endoscopy equipment owing to this hostile siege,” said Assistant Professor and Researcher and Master of Higher Medical Education.

It is worth mentioning that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the institution has kept in place its services of medical assistance, consultation, endoscopy, pathological anatomy, radiology, clinical and special research laboratories.

Among its major programs are the integral evaluation of adult and child Chronic Hepatitis B patients, ranging from prevention with a prophylactic vaccine to the treatment with oral antivirals and immunomodulators, in addition to the Cuban therapeutic vaccine HerberNasvac.
They also include the integration of Natural and Traditional Medicine in the quality of life of patients with chronic liver diseases.