The United Nations has once again recognized Cuba’s experience on the path to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In a publication on its website to mark the United Nations Commemoration Day for South-South Cooperation on September 12, it highlighted the island’s efforts through its medical missions.
The outstanding example of this was Cuba’s support in the fight against Ebola in West Africa. At the request of then United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, Cuba sent more than 200 doctors to the affected countries (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone) under WHO coordination.
At that time, the existing medical brigades were also maintained in 32 African countries where cooperation agreements already existed, places where Cuban professionals worked with teams from the United States, England and African Union countries, among others, to counter this outbreak.
With regard to South-South cooperation, the United Nations also highlighted UNESCO’s efforts to develop teacher training programs with exchanges of experience between Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
He also acknowledged Brazil’s support to the Republic of Congo, which leveraged the rich Brazilian experience and innovation in family farming and school feeding programs.
The United Nations sees South-South cooperation as an expression of solidarity between the peoples and developing countries of this part of the hemisphere, which is implemented within the framework of comprehensive cooperation in the areas of politics, economics, social affairs, culture, the environment and technology.
This may involve cooperation at bilateral, regional, intra-regional or inter-regional level; and how one of its modalities could be triangular cooperation, in which traditional donor countries and multilateral organizations facilitate South-South initiatives through financing, training, management and technological systems, as well as other forms of support.
In the case of Cuba, according to the Journal of Medical Sciences, there are precedents, particularly in the health sector, such as the South-South Cooperation Program implemented within the Group of 77 together with Nigeria and Libya; the polio eradication program in Angola in collaboration with PAHO/WHO-Angola; Collaboration in the production of AC antimeningococcal vaccines for the African continent, implemented between the Finlay Institute in Cuba and Biomanguinhos in Brazil at the request of the WHO; and the transfer of technologies for the production of vaccines and medicines between Cuba-India, China, Vietnam, Brazil and Algeria.