Resources
Inside Cuba
Cubans approved a new progressive Family Law with 66.87% voting in favor in an historic national referendum on September 25, 2022. This updated law legalizes same-sex marriage and equal adoption rights, protects the rights of surrogate mothers and recognizes the role of grandparents in the family, among other rights and responsibilities relevant to contemporary Cuban families.
Cuban Health & Biotech
In June 2022 an international delegation of scientists from the United States, the Caribbean and Africa traveled to Havana for a three-day fact-finding mission to better understand Cuba’s COVID-19 vaccine development and vaccination efforts. Delegation members represented a broad range of expertise in public health systems, infectious diseases, biotechnology and vaccine development. These are their conclusions about the vaccines developed at Cuban biotech centers and used throughout Cuba for adults and children alike.
Cuba: Global Health Cooperation
Filmed in seven countries across three continents, this award-winning documentary looks at the Cuban health care system and how it has spread around the world through medical diplomacy. The film also features exchange programs which bring medical trainees to Cuba, including students from the U.S., who would not have the opportunity to go to medical school in their home countries. This compelling film takes the viewpoint that “quality healthcare is a human right, not a commodity.”
U.S. Policy Towards Cuba
“It does not serve America’s interests or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba towards collapse,” declared President Obama during his historic 2016 visit to the island. So why are sanctions against Cuba the most stringent since the policy’s inception in 1962? Cuban journalist Liz Oliva travels to Washington DC to look at the drivers of US policymaking on Cuba. Among others, she interviews Rep. Jim McGovern, former CIA analyst Fulton Armstrong, and Cuban-American business executive Carlos Gutiérrez, who served as Secretary of Commerce under George W. Bush. The documentary is an eye-opener on the history of US sanctions, including designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism under the Trump administration.
U.S.-Cuba: Health Cooperation
Today, this collaboration involving clinical trials in the U.S. for novel therapeutic lung cancer vaccines developed in Cuba is the only joint venture between the two countries.