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Although that country’s medical equipment is of high quality, its price is often abusively high. There are specialized companies on the international market whose machinery is perceived as the finest in the world. It is perfectly possible to game machines do without U.S. equipment, if one wishes to avoid the risks of a criminal blockade like the one that has been applied to Cuba for 50 years. In the hospitals of Japan, a country whose population has the highest averages of life expectancy, the overwhelming majority of the machinery is Japanese; the rest is imported from Europe or the United States. In the most industrialized European countries, where health rates are also higher than those of the United States, barely 30% of the equipment comes from Japan or the United States. For preference they use European machines. In both Japan and Europe the quality standards are much more demanding than in the cultured pearl jewelry United States.
I am pleased to observe that the line followed by the Cuban company specialized in the purchase of medical equipment was rigorously adjusted to proven principles in the previous purchases. More than 50 known companies took part. I shall only note those that competed in terms of quality and price. The major volume agreed corresponded to the German Siemens company, to a total of $73.91 million; Drager, $37.277 million; Toshiba, $36.123 million; Nihon Kohden: $30.516 million. The pearl strand wholesale Olympus, Karl Storz, Aloka, Carl Zeiss, Pressure and other companies well known to our specialists signed contracts; all of them reflect the revolutionary advance of medical technology in the last 20 years.
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The social programs in Venezuela emerged as a fruit of the Bolivarian Revolution. I do not need to praise the close historical links between the two peoples and the ties of sisterhood that unite them.
I have already explained the game machines decision taken by President Hugo Ch¨¢vez that gave rise to our cooperation programs. That decision likewise gave rise, in early 2007, to the idea of adding the Barrio Adentro 3 program to those already existing, Barrio Adentro 1 and Barrio Adentro 2. Within the new program the cost of the equipment would be covered by Venezuela and would be handled by Venezuelan doctors. Knowing of our experience in negotiations with medical equipment manufacturing companies, and the excellent prices for those supplies that we obtained given the volume of the operation, Ch¨¢vez asked our country to acquire machines, instruments and medical supplies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The blister pearl objective of the investment was to incorporate a significant number of hospital centers into the services that were being provided to the Venezuelan people in Barrio Adentro 1 and 2. To this was added the training program, in Cuba, for thousands of young Venezuelans as doctors capable of providing services anywhere, within and outside of the country. The graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine are heartening evidence of its spirit of sacrifice. We also contributed to the training of more than 20,000 students of medicine in Venezuela itself. Our personnel entered into contact once again with the best suppliers of medical equipment, components and furniture, with the wholesale pearl jewelry exception – logically – of the U.S. companies, which are totally forbidden from supplying Cuba with anything.
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Machines from Siemens – with the exception of some sent to Bolivia – were providing services in Cuba and in the two Venezuelan programs. The value of the equipment acquired from that company totaled $85.43 million. In addition to the freshwater pearl two companies mentioned, other European and Japanese ones supplied important additional machinery for the 27 Advanced Technology Diagnostic Centers of Barrio Adentro 2. Philips is not questioning the date provided. The total suspension of supplies of spare parts came at the end of 2006; thus close to three years have passed from then up until now.
The company acknowledges that the exigencies of the government of the United States prompted the paralyzation of supplies up until its recent payment of a 100,000-euro fine, a derisory sum in comparison to the $72 million paid to that wholesale pearl jewelry company for equipment. We had understood that there was no violation at all of the regulations imposed on the world by the empire. This concerns medical equipment, directed at saving lives; not weapons of war. In January 2007 the Bush government appointed John Negroponte – the people’s executioner in Nicaragua during the dirty war against that country initiated in 1981 from the yanki Palmerola Base in Honduras – as assistant secretary of state. He had a murky history in the wars of aggression against Vietnam and Iraq. He was the first director of the powerful National Intelligence Agency. He accompanied the freshwater pearl strands president of the United States in the White House conference in mid-2007, where there was so much talk on education and health. Both of them were aware that our specialists were providing medical services using Philips’ equipment in Cuba and Venezuela. They had put pressure on the Dutch company and managed to prevent it from supplying parts for those machines.
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I would not have wished to harshly criticize one of the companies dedicated to the production of medical equipment that does no obtain its profits by manufacturing weapons to kill, but by combating disease, suffering and death. For that reason, I have always treated all of them with respect and have enjoyed leisure chairs conversing with them on their scientific advances. It is a different matter to think bitterly of countries that do not have those machines at their disposal, that a Third World nation can see its efforts being hindered by the stupid measure that a rich and powerful country is imposing on those cultured pearl jewelry who manufacture such equipment: the suspension of supplying spare parts for their use. Between Venezuela and Cuba, Cuban cardiology specialists have available 28 Philips Ecocardiographs, without which an accurate and totally secure diagnosis is impossible. Each non-functioning machine translates into 500 patients per month who are not provided with that vital service.
In our country cardiac problems constitute the primary cause of death; it is more or less the same situation in Venezuela. Defibrillators are the par excellence instrument for pulling people out of cardiac arrest, a condition that dancing pearl could kill them if they do not receive urgent assistance. Of the 3,552 machines acquired from Philips, 2,000 were of that type, utilized in Cuban polyclinics and in the Venezuelan Barrio Adentro Diagnostic centers. The 12 distinct types of Philips machines, acquired at a cost of $72.76 million, were all essential to high-quality services in Cuba and within the Venezuelan Barrio Adentro 1 and 2 programs, serviced by Cuban doctors and specialists. They were acquired and paid for by our country, as was agreed.
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In August 1958, she joined the Rebel Army on the Frank Pa¨ªs Second Eastern Front, led by Commander Ra¨²l Castro Ruz. There, she directed its education department, which established more than 400 schools and groups for children inflatable bouncers and for giving literacy classes to combatants. In 1960, she participated with Vilma in the creation of the Federation of Cuban Women, and was on its National Bureau, first as organizer and then as general secretary, until 1966, when she joined the MINFAR as director of the wholesale pearl jewelry General Staff Department of Education and the Camilo Cienfuegos Military Schools. She was promoted to captain. In 1970, she was designated general director of personnel training for the Ministry of Education and was promoted to various responsibilities, including that of minister. She is a founder member of the freshwater pearl jewelry Communist Party and was a member of its Central Committee for three mandates.
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