Our 11th online event examined Cuba’s impressive response to the global pandemic, which includes sending health workers to several other countries, in the face of intense US hostility.

As the pandemic has plunged the world into crisis, Cuba’s response offers a lesson to other countries. By reacting quickly and decisively, mobilising their extensive public healthcare system and state-owned biotech sector, Cuba has kept contagion and fatalities down and initiated clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine. They have also treated patients and saved lives overseas.

Cuba has achieved this while still subject to illegal economic sanctions imposed by the US and amid intense hostility from the Trump administration.

How has Cuba managed this and what lies behind the Revolution’s enduring strength? What lessons should we draw from Cuba today? Now that Trump finally appears to be on the way out, will the Biden administration attempt to restart Obama’s policy of diplomacy?

Speakers:

Helen Yaffe, economic historian at the University of Glasgow, UK and author of ‘We are Cuba’

Valia Rodriguez, Cuban physician at the University of Aston, UK

Chaired by Ammar Kazmi, political activist

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