• Submitted by: manso
• International
• 03 / 24 / 2011

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2011.03.24 / radiorebelde.icrt.cu. HAVANA, CUBA.- Lea Guido, representative to Cuba of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), highlighted the island’s cooperation and solidarity in the struggle against infectious diseases in other countries.

During a press conference held at the PAHO-WHO office in Havana on the occasion of World Health Day (April 7), Guido underlined Cuba’s example in this field and pointed out how it can continue struggling against these diseases, by saving resources to have more positive impact, and told this agency about the services offered by Cuban health collaborators in nations like Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Haiti, and how they educate the population in those countries health-wise.

She also praised the results obtained in this field by the Caribbean island, where all citizens have access to free health care, and where there’s an industry to produce medicaments and a Regulation Bureau for the quality of these products and vigilance for medicines imported.

This reasserts how we can continue fighting these diseases, stressed Guido, while referring to World Health Day.

Dr. Andres Zambrana, an official with the Public Health Ministry’s Department for Hygiene and Epidemiology, explained that acute respiratory diseases are the main reason for medical consultations and that 80 percent of them are viral, so they don’t have anything to do with antibiotics.

Antimicrobial resistance is a phenomenon that has been present since the emergence of antibiotics and the best way to fight an infectious disease is not to contract it, hence the importance of prevention, said Zambrana.

He recalled that, in 2010, Cuba’s infant mortality rate was 4.5 per every 1,000 live births, the lowest in history for this indicator, and that the National Mother-Child Care Program protects children against 13 infectious diseases, which are no longer a health problem.

Dr. Alina Llop, Deputy Director for Microbiology of Havana’s Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute –with a network of over 180 microbiology labs throughout the island-, explained that her institution participates since 1975 in the PAHO’s Latin American Network for Monitoring Antimicrobial Resistance, which collects the results of the countries making up this organization.  

This year, World Health Day will be marked under the slogan “No action today, no cure tomorrow.” (ACN)