21 June 1997
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Editorial

U.S. should lift ban on food and medicine for Cubans

Passage of a bipartisan bill in Congress to ease restrictions on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba would restore some sanity to a misguided U.S. policy that inflicts suffering on innocent Cuban citizens.

Hard-liners have vowed to defeat the proposal. Even if they suceed, the debate touched off by its introduction should alert Americans to the unintended consequences of the U.S. embargo of Communist Cuba.

Rep. Esteban Torres, D-Calif., the bill's chief sponsor, said existing licensing requirements and outright prohibitions of sales have drastically limited Cuban access to U.S.-produced medicines and medical equipment. As a result, the health of women and children, in particular, has suffered.

Under the proposed legislation, Cuba could buy food and medicine from American companies without the need for special Treasury Department certification and supervision by charity organizations.

Rep. Torres and 11 colleagues drafted the bill after the American Association for World Health released a report in March which concluded that the U.S. embargo "has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition" of large numbers of ordinary Cubans.

The Washington-based nonprofit group, which gets grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other sources, spent a year investigating the Cuban health system. In the opinion of its medical experts, the U.S. embargo "has caused a significant rise in suffering - and even deaths - in Cuba."

The AAWH's 300-page study found that the embargo has caused unnecessary suffering by severely restricting Cuba's access to needed medicines and medical equipment.

A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government, despite a weakened economy, has continued a high level of financial support for a system that was designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all its citizens, the organization said.

The U.S. State Department as well as fiercely pro-embargo Cuban-American lawmakers reject those findings, arguing that Cuban President Fidel Castro's policies - not U.S. sanctions - are harming Cubans.

It is true that the United States did not cause Cuba's health-care crisis, but U.S. sanctions more harsh than those imposed on Iraq have exacerbated the problem.

Cuba's health-care system, once among the finest in the world, has been damaged by the island nation's weakened economy following the end of Soviet aid. Tighteter U.S. sanctions imposed in 1992 by the so-called Cuban Democracy Act have increased the strain on the system.

This newpaper has long argued that the U.S. embargo of Cuba is bad foreign policy, demeaning and counterproductive. Freedom-loving people everwhere want to see an end to Mr. Castro's police state, but denying food and medicine to blameless citizens, regardless of the motive, is immoral. Congress should end the insanity now.

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