Did you know? Cuba🇨🇺 not only exported its army of doctors around the world, but also a revolutionary system to eradicate illiteracy; Yo, Si Puedo.
The system was designed to bring literacy to poorer and rural areas which had limited access to training and teachers.
Rather than relying on traditional textbooks and teaching, the program used a combination of numbers, letters, audiovisual lessons, and local facilitators to teach adults how to read and write.
The system was adapted for dozens of languages in international usage, as well as indigenous languages.
Venezuela🇻🇪 widely used the revolutionary program in its own literacy campaign, with the country being declared illiteracy free by 2005. Bolivia🇧🇴 under President Evo Morales also used the program to eradicate illiteracy in the country.
Nearly 10 million people learned to read and write through the Yo Sí Puedo method between 2002 and 2016, the program was implemented in over 30 countries.
Cuba’s🇨🇺 achievements in healthcare despite the illegal US embargo:
• Cuba has of the highest doctor-to-population ratios in the world, with roughly 8 doctors per 1,000 people, several times the global average.
• First country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis (WHO validated, 2015). Cuba reduced HIV transmission from mother to child below 2%, with only 2 babies born with HIV and 3 with congenital syphilis in 2013.
• Medical internationalism: More than 600,000 Cuban healthcare professionals have served in over 160 countries since the 1960s, responding to disasters, epidemics, and healthcare shortages.
• Developed the world’s first effective vaccine against meningococcal B meningitis. Cuba’s VA-MENGOC-BC vaccine was introduced in 1989, tackling a disease that had caused major outbreaks.
• Created Heberprot-P, a treatment for diabetic foot ulcers that has reportedly reduced the need for amputations in many patients and has been used in dozens of countries.
• Built a biotechnology sector from scratch despite decades of illegal unilateral sanctions. Cuba now produces the majority of its own vaccines and exports medical products internationally.
• Developed multiple COVID-19 vaccines, including Abdala and Soberana, becoming one of the few countries in the Global South to create and manufacture its own COVID vaccines.
• Infant mortality is comparable to many developed countries, despite Cuba’s much lower GDP per capita. Cuba’s infant mortality rate has often been lower than that of the USA.
• Near-universal vaccination coverage, with childhood vaccination rates consistently above 95% for many major diseases.
• Universal healthcare coverage, providing free access to primary care, specialist care, hospitalisation, and preventive medicine nationwide.
These are reasons Trump and Rubio want to destroy Cuba; because Cuba didn’t only dare to resist the suffocating US embargo, but also showed the world that it could triumph with an alternative model of development.