The 63 Years of the US Blockcade, Cuba Still Educates International Doctors For Free

By JR Valrey, The Minister of Information

Dr. Samira Addrey is a class of 2020 alumni of The Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), and an organizer with IFCO/Pastors For Peace, who is currently giving out scholarships for ELAM. The ELAM scholarships were created by the Cuban goverment to help develop health and wellness services for underserved communities around the world.

Recently, the US and Israel against the rest of the intetnational community succeeded in keeping a 63 year blockade of the nation in place, at the United Nations.

Within the last two months, Cuba has been hit with nationwide blackouts caused by shortages that the blockcade created, a renewal of the blockcade, two hurricanes, and two earthquakes.

Dr. Addrey recently visited the island, and was gracious enough to give us a reportback from the ground about the recent damage that has occurred because of the disasters, the damage caused by the decades-long illegal blockcade being renewed, as well as to let us know that the Cubans will continue to fight the Revolution against capitalism and imperialism worldwide.

JR Valrey: A few weeks ago, the U.S. and Israel were the only two nations in the UN that voted to continue the 63-year-old blockade against Cuba; what kind of impact has this blockade had on the island’s medical system in particular?

Dr. Addrey: The socialist government funds universal health care for all its citizens and endorses health as a human right, something boldly identified in its constitution. It even extends that guarantee to people of other nations by sending its professionals to help with health, education, sports, culture, and so much more. More people need to understand that the definition of health is all-encompassing. Access to healthy food, transportation, housing, safety, good education, and medical care are the social determinants of health. Cuba has long invested in ensuring its people have these things on a fundamental level as a springboard for overall health. But believe it or not, due to the US blockade of Cuba, when the Cuban government appealed for ventilators to be sold to them during the COVID-19 pandemic, access was denied. Companies in Europe that sold medicines and vaccines to the Cuban government were later fined millions of dollars as a deterrence to others who would want to do business with Cuba. Cancer drugs from pediatric patients are expensive and complicated to access in the necessary quantities because the US restrictions under the blockade policy make it so. Should sick children or anyone needing care suffer because of this unjust US government policy? Solidarity groups have been campaigning to send health equipment and medicines to Cuba for decades, and it’s because there is an intentional obstruction to access by the US government and US companies denying business transactions with Cuba.

The blockade has caused the Cuban healthcare system billions of dollars in losses and shortages. The US government falsely claims that food and medicine are exempt from the blockade’s restrictions, but not for the patients and providers within the Cuban medical system who have their hands tied to reaching optimal health. Whether it is related to the purchase of medications to supplement what Cuba can produce by itself or the collapse of factories because of a lack of access to raw materials to be self-sufficient in resolving the needs of their population, the Cuban health system faces serious challenges. The fuel needed to power trucks to pick up trash and power machines that fumigate neighborhoods to protect people from the spread of diseases is hindered by the blockade because countries and companies are intimidated by the US government from doing business directly with the Cuban government and the broad reach of the blockade policies have drastically reduced fuel imports. One of Cuba’s strongest allies in the region, Venezuela, is also being sanctioned and punished for pursuing a socialist project, so the historical help that Cuba offered in trading health workers for oil was stifled by the blockade in recent years. While Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia continue to help Cuba, it comes with many challenges, and Cuba also has to buy from companies who can deliver and withstand the 6-month ban from US ports if their ships dock in Cuba. Hospitals need essential equipment and advanced technology replacements that are heavily produced, owned by US companies, and have more than 10 percent US components— but again, the medical system in Cuba goes beyond the walls of hospitals and clinics.

JR Valrey: Can you talk about the recent blackouts plaguing the island? What is going on?

Dr. Addrey: Cuba has been grappling with fuel shortages for several months, leading to a critical situation of inconsistent electricity supply. The Cuban government has resorted to scheduling rolling blackouts to manage electricity distribution. However, the situation escalated last month when the national electrical grid collapsed, plunging the island into a total blackout. This overall electrical instability results from decades of neglect towards the country’s infrastructure and the urgent need for repair and maintenance of power plants. Those with access to generators may be able to escape the rolling blackouts, but even those generators need fuel to stay running unless they are solar-powered. None of these options are cheap, nor can they be widely distributed due to the Cuban government’s economic crisis grappling with internal restructuring, COVID-19 gutting the country’s tourism sector, and the tightening of the blockade under Trump and Biden.

JR Valrey: Can you talk about the two big earthquakes that have hit Cuba in recent weeks? How bad was the damage? And what cities were hit?

Dr. Addrey: The earthquakes occurred on November 10, 2024, in the island’s eastern side, particularly impacting Granma and Santiago de Cuba provinces, and the epicenter was near Pilon in Granma. The aftershocks were felt in Guantanamo, Holguin, and Ciego de Avila provinces. The physical damages reported were cracks and collapses in residential homes and public institutions like schools. Power lines fell over, and landslides also occurred, but the psychological impact on the people of those areas was more concerning. The authorities immediately warned Cubans to stay in open areas until the tremors stopped. I was sitting in a disaster medicine course when the lecturers shared that busses had been sent to Granma with psychologists from different parts of Cuba to help the victims of the earthquakes because many of them were afraid of reentering their homes after seeing the cracks and damages that resulted. We also discussed how earthquakes have no warning system, unlike hurricanes and storms, which the island has much experience tackling. Unfortunately, more minor earthquakes are still happening, with the latest one of 4.2 magnitudes on November 19, 2024 that was felt in Granma.

JR Valrey: Can you talk a little bit about the ELAM scholarship? What is it? Who is eligible?

Dr. Addrey: ELAM is the Spanish abbreviation for Escuela Latinoamerican de Medicina, the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba. The school was founded as a result of the devastating effects of Hurricane Mitch and George when hundreds of thousands of people in Central America and the Caribbean suffered greatly. The late Cuban president, Fidel Castro, created the school to train youth from poor communities impacted by the hurricanes as doctors so they could return and expand access to healthcare in their countries. The offer was then later extended to other countries, including the US. So in 2000, Fidel officially invited US citizens coming from black, brown, low-income, working-class backgrounds, and other marginalized communities to apply, and IFCO/Pastors for Peace was designated as the sole administrator of these scholarships in the U.S. It is a seven-year full-ride medical school scholarship open to US citizens, ages 18-25, who have completed a full year of college-level biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics with a B average or better.

JR Valrey: Can you talk about your history as an alumni of ELAM?

Dr. Addrey: I graduated from ELAM in 2020, and my experience at the school greatly influenced me because of the exposure I gained by being around classmates from over 120 countries, many of whom also came from working-class families who could not afford the high cost of medical school in their countries. I learned Spanish while studying in Cuba because they offered an intensive language immersion program for those not from Spanish-speaking communities. For the first three years of our education, we were trained in basic medical sciences and encouraged to maintain and share our cultural traditions and practices amongst each other. After that, we spent the remaining four years deepening our clinical training with rotations at major teaching hospitals and their catchment areas. We can shadow physicians at primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions without hassle. Our lives were centered around what we learned in the classroom and our daily interactions with Cuban professors and school staff, who became family to us. They emphasized the need to engage with the community to understand the pressing problems of Cuban communities, and our professors helped us correlate that with the needs of our communities back home. We were given the privilege of hands-on training with patients from our first year of medical school, with weekly visits to surrounding polyclinics and family doctor consultation offices, so that we could understand the role of the family doctor and nurse in each neighborhood in Cuba. No matter the subject we were learning, we were encouraged to dive deeply and remember why our communities at home needed us to return as doctors capable of assisting in different aspects of health care and wellness through promoting healthy lifestyles and prevention measures that also respected the dignity and traditions of our people. When I finished the 7-year journey in 2020, I was leaving Cuba during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being trained in a country that prioritized saving lives through community screening carried out by medical students along with other health professionals, using homeopathic remedies when vaccines weren’t yet available, and eventually manufacturing their vaccines to save Cubans and share with other countries that were shut out of access to big pharma produced vaccines, made me acutely aware of the gaps and inequities in the broken US system. Cubans utilized every form of prevention to save people, and this was vastly different from witnessing the way the US system left the most vulnerable to dying from a preventable illness. Since graduating, I have been working as the ELAM scholarship program coordinator at IFCO/Pastors for Peace, and among many of the roles I play, educating people about Cuba’s healthcare system helps me show why we should be sending more youth to Cuba to be trained as doctors for our communities and the world primarily as we face more shortages of primary care physicians in the US. I just returned from the 25th Anniversary Congress of ELAM graduates. It was once again crucial for my comrades and I to recharge the values we were trained with at ELAM, which remain that we are called to be doctors of science and conscience.

JR Valrey: Can you discuss Cuba’s history of supporting nations around the world in need with its army of doctors?

Dr. Addrey: Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the government has sent doctors and other health professionals to countries to help in times of disaster, war, and disease outbreaks. In the last 64 years, the government has sent over 400,000 personnel to 165 countries. Many of these healthcare workers have braved new geographical frontiers and overcome language and cultural barriers to deliver much-needed care to needy populations. Whether it been the Cuban doctors who worked in Algeria or the DRC when they were fighting for liberation from colonial forces or doctors in the Amazon of Brazil and Venezuela reaching communities marginalized from society or sending doctors to respond to the Ebola crisis that affected West African countries and more recently doctors being sent all over to combat COVID-19, Cuba has been consistent in word and deed in offering medical solidarity internationally. The most recent examples of expanding that unique brand of Cuban solidarity come from the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba, educating and graduating over 31,000 doctors from 122 to serve their respective communities.

JR Valrey: How can people get more information on the ELAM scholarship? How can people support Cuba politically and financially at this catastrophic time?

Dr. Addrey: People can visit the IFCO/Pastors for Peace website at www.ifconews.org for more information about the ELAM scholarship and request an application. Supporting Cuba during this time is vital to continuing a long friendship and solidarity between the Cuban people and the people of the US. No matter who is in the White House, we want to help Cubans as much as they continue to support the world. Please remember to tell elected officials to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list because it is wrong to have Cuba on such a list, and Cuba has been a sponsor of health and peace for all and a victim of terrorism all these years. Please look up the current humanitarian aid initiatives led by the People’s Forum, Hatuey Project, and Global Health Partners, and, of course, be on the lookout for the next Friendshipment Caravan with IFCO/Pastors for Peace. It is essential to travel to Cuba with these different organizations and others like the National Network on Cuba, Venceremos Brigade, CodePink, and Witness for Peace to learn about Cuba firsthand so we don’t fall victim to lies about that beautiful island and its revolutionary people.

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