La Solidaridad y el amor al projimo derriban las barreras del bloqueo en Nueva York
http://www.granma.cu/mundo/2020-04-17/la-solidaridad-y-el-amor-al-projimo-derriban-las-barreras-del-bloqueo-en-nueva-york-17-04-2020-22-04-44
Solidarity and love among neighbors delivers a strong blow to the embargo in New York
Alejandra Garcia Elizalde
Granma, April 18, 2020
Translated by Merriam Ansara. Edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
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The United States has not been able to control COVID-19. The government of Donald Trump did not take action in time, he brushed aside the truth of the situation, and as a consequence, more than 34,000 people have died.
History’s longest blockade has been used to block access by the Cuban system of health to supplies needed to fight the deadly SARS COV-2. Despite that, the medical education of the Island has gone around the barriers maintained by successive North American administrations and that Trump has tried to fortify.
In New York, the epicenter of the disease in the U.S., Doctor Melissa Barber is today putting into practice the lessons she learned in Cuba studying at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). In the South Bronx she leads a team that she organized in the heart of this community to provide supplies and resources to fight the disease.
The number of positive cases shoots up daily while the hospitals are filled to the limit. Ensuring patients are taken care of is truly a challenge, the young woman tells the daily The Independent.
But Barber carries with her what she has learned: “Cuba, as few countries in the world, understands that medical care starts not when the person is taken away in an ambulance but in the community.” She takes care of each neighbor just as she did during her years of study in Cuba. She has identified the most vulnerable people in the community, one of the poorest in New York. “This includes the elderly, newborns and small children.”
“The desire to save lives, to be a humanist above all are the values I carried with me from Cuba, from my training as a doctor in that country of solidarity,” says the young graduate of ELAM.
“In these days of such sadness, it fills me with optimism to know that Cuba has sent medical brigades to Italy, Surinam, Nicaragua,Venezuela, Jamaica, Grenada and elsewhere. Few countries provide such help or receive such medical assistance in situations of disaster as Cuba provides,” she says.
Today Melissa Barber saves lives in New York, as she did in Cuba. She helps and supports other young doctors as she was helped by Cuban health professionals more than a decade ago. Strong ties link Havana and the Bronx, mocking the blockade: Solidarity and love among neighbors.
