The Cuban vaccines the United States has been unable to ban

 A recent World Health Organization (WHO) report warns that measles cases are increasing in parts of the cultured Europe, a disease far from being a thing of the past in that region and bound to be around for some time because the European nations are not meeting their vaccination targets.

Meanwhile, in Cuba, where vaccines are a well-established field because the population is protected against this and other diseases with a +98% coverage, the Havana-based Finlay Institute of Vaccines proceeds with its successful program to develop pneumococcal conjugate vaccines as part of a life-saving system which already boasts a first formulation, registered in 2024, as clinical trials continue.

The good news were announced Tuesday at the usual meeting between health experts and scientists and the country's top leadership to review the development projects that the island keeps in place despite the increasingly aggressive economic asphyxiation policy imposed by the United States.

 Despite the limitations caused by the imperial blockade, which has failed to stifle Cuba’s thirst for knowledge and scientific progress, the country maintains the national immunization program launched in 1962 with a first round of vaccination against polio, a disease that remains a painful memory for many Cuban families before that time.

 Since its appearance in the late 19^th century, this highly contagious illness has infected more than 2,000 people and killed some 200 of them, all under the age of 15. However, polio no longer exists in this island. With only ten non-fatal cases reported between 1963 and 1989, WHO certified the elimination of this disease in Cuba in 1994, as it did in the cases of diphtheria (1979), measles (1993), rubella (1995), mumps (1995), and pertussis (1997), since the Cuban population is vaccinated against all of these illnesses, including COVID-19.

The country’s free immunization program also features the pneumococcal vaccine developed in 2024 by the Finlay Institute, founded in 1991 by Fidel Castro, another of his bold achievements as a driving force behind the national scientific program’s leap forward thanks to institutions with great potential and high-quality results.

Estimates have it that 95,000 people died from measles worldwide―mostly children under 5―in 2024, and last year, according to the WHO, the number of cases rose by 47% in Europe and Central Asia due to declining vaccination rates. Spain, the United Kingdom, Austria, Armenia, and other countries have once again registered endemic transmission.

In Cuba, nevertheless, communicable diseases are no longer among the leading causes of death. At least eight of the vaccines administered in the island are produced by the Cuban biotechnology industry with the help of reagents and other resources contributed by organizations such as UNICEF and PAHO.

In this way, the priorities of the Cuban Revolution are being upheld to improve people’s quality of life, a goal for which many of the obstacles posed by the U.S. blockade have been overcome.