The United Nations Millennium Summit has been marked by the frequent expression of noble sentiments and lofty goals. Fewer have been the concrete measures proposed to reach those goals, and even fewer the leaders willing to point the finger at those responsible for the current state of affairs.
Fidel Castro was one of the speakers at the summit who did that, who called things by their right names. He was also the only leader who made a unilateral offer on behalf of his own country to contribute to begin solving some of these problems.
The offer was made at one of the less formal round table discussions at the summit, which were totally ignored by the mainstream press. Following is what Fidel said there, as published in Granma International.
I have meditated a great deal about the seriousness of this subject and a series of data, but I think that this is a subject that has been discussed for more than 40 years, and actually we haven't progressed but rather gone backwards.
Proof of what I say is that at the present time, in more than 100 countries, per capita income is lower than it was 15 years ago.
Everybody here has expounded the ideas they most wished to transmit within the brevity of the time available, and I would like to say that I am profoundly affected by issues related to the disastrous state of health currently affecting the world, particularly in the Third World countries. I don't really like using a lot of figures, but I am going to use some.
Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa barely reaches 48 years. This is 30 years less than in the developed countries.
In terms of the maternal death rate, 99.5% of all such deaths occur in the Third World.
The risk of maternal death in Europe is one per 1400 births; in Africa it is one per 16. The general mortality rate is similar.
More than 11 million under-fives die every year in the Third World as a result of preventable diseases in the overwhelming majority of cases: more than 30,000 every day, 21 every minute. While we are talking here, 100 are dying.
Two out of every five children in the Third World countries suffer from retarded growth, and one out of every three is underweight in relation to age.
Two million female children are forced into prostitution.
In the underdeveloped countries, approximately 250 million children under the age of 15 are obliged to work in order to survive.
Many people have also talked here on the issue of AIDS. I had the impression some months ago, at the meeting in Durban, that the tragedy of AIDS in Africa had been discovered by the West, and at that conference, as was widely reported by the news agencies, there was talk of how to reduce the cost of medical care for persons infected with AIDS and keep them alive.
We all know that the cost is US$10,000 per infected person. It was affirmed there by representatives from the Western nations, European countries in general, that cost-saving formulas had to be sought. Everyone knows that it costs close to US$1000 per person with AIDS to produce those medicaments and, starting from a perfect formula and a perfect cocktail, that amount could be greatly reduced. But more than a few African representatives expressed a hard reality: that even if they were donated the medicaments, they lacked the infrastructure to distribute and administer them.
On the other hand, I have also heard representatives from industrialised countries like France, Sweden, Germany and others present here express their disposition to help these Third World countries.
This is a question of life or death. I was asking myself: what could we do? I remind you that Cuba is a small country, and poor. And something else: besieged and blockaded. But I don't want to talk to you about that. Thanks to the intensive educational programs that have been developed over many years, Cuba now has a significant human capital, and human capital is decisive; I would say that it is even more important than financial capital.
And our country has sufficient medical personnel to cooperate — if the United Nations agrees — with the World Health Organisation and with the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, who are suffering from this destructive scourge to the greatest degree, in order to organise the infrastructure needed to administer those medications in Africa on an emergency basis. I am not exaggerating. This could signify 1000 doctors, 2000 or 3000 health workers, including paramedics who would be needed to collectively undertake that program.
We don't have to wait for millions of children to die; a good proportion of the 25 million persons infected could survive, thus averting growing numbers of orphans, already close to 12 million, a figure which, in another few years, will increase to 40 million, a Dantean tragedy!
No country, whatever its resources, can develop with 25-30% of its population infected with AIDS and millions and millions of orphans. In my view, this would really signify the extermination of entire African nations, and possibly a large part of the African continent. That is the reality.
For that reason, although I wasn't necessarily going to speak, I arrived after the meeting opened because I was at the plenary session and, listening to you, decided to propose this plan; thus, concretely: Cuba offers the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the African countries the personnel necessary for developing not only AIDS programs, but also other health care programs, and also to give hands-on training there to technical and nursing personnel.
The first thing we do in the places we go to is to create a medical school. Africa needs thousands of doctors in order to provide one doctor per 5000 inhabitants; our country has one doctor per 168 inhabitants. We have experience in health care; currently some 2000 doctors are doing an excellent job working abroad. This is what I wish to propose concretely here, in a spirit of cooperation. And hopefully the European countries, the industrialised countries represented here, will take account of what I am proposing and could make the effort to contribute to finding the medicaments, to reducing their cost.
What is taking place in the world is worse than warfare. In Africa one million people die from malaria every year while 300-500 million are infected; moreover, 2 million people die of AIDS, and for every two who die, four to five are infected — we know there have not been sufficient advances as yet for a vaccine and it's not known when that's going to materialise — and 3 million die of tuberculosis.
We are proposing, concretely, a program for Africa. I am not exaggerating in the least and we are not seeking anything for ourselves. Wherever our doctors go they do not talk about religion, or politics, or philosophy; they have been fulfilling missions for years and have earned the greatest respect and acknowledgment from the local population.
I leave this proposition in the hands of this United Nations round table, and that's it.
Thank you very much, Mr President.