Havana-. The year that ended has been difficult for the world, especially for the countries that make up the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America and Our Peoples Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP).
The scourge of the pandemic caused by Covid-19 has been joined by US interventions and destabilizing actions against the bloc’s members, natural disasters and the consequences of an unfair global economic order.
Cuba is heavily besieged, Venezuela and Nicaragua are also under siege; Bolivia rallied to face renewed preparations for the coup.
At the same time, there is a devastating volcano in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and another earthquake in Haiti, which, although not belonging to the mechanism, enjoys all their solidarity.
Meanwhile, the Caribbean suffers from brutal outages in tourism, as well as other economic fluctuations of various kinds.
It was a period, at the same time, of a lot of action, including the nineteenth summit in Caracas marking the bicentenary of the Battle of Carabobo, and multiple sectoral meetings to strengthen cooperation
The group has set up a humanitarian fund to set up the Alba Vaccine Bank, as well as the Medicines Bank, in order to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
In this regard, it has set up a humanitarian air bridge, via the Venezuelan airline Conviasa, to transport vaccines, medical staff, treatments and supplies.
Through this and other route, Cuban medical battalions have traveled to NATO countries, and others in the region and beyond, to combat Covid-19. Thousands of lives were saved.
On March 4, Conviasa transported 20,000 doses of the Chinese Sinopharma vaccine to the Commonwealth of Dominica, an action financed by Alba Bank.
Something similar happened with the air and sea bridge that provided assistance to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines after the eruption of the La Soufriere volcano.
Among its mutual economic assistance initiatives, Bank Alba has provided $2 million in economic relief funding to Eastern Caribbean countries. This allowed them to complete negotiations with companies and third countries to purchase vaccines.
These countries also received financing for small agricultural producers to enhance sovereignty and food security.
In the spirit of ALBA, more than 2,000 young people from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa are trained as community physicians at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) which has offices in Cuba and Venezuela.
ALBA-TCP celebrates its 17th anniversary with the encouragement of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and the accompaniment of other leaders, including Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales.
Havana will host its XX Summit on December 14, an opportunity to review, propose and adopt as well as recognize the results of this effort against neoliberalism, cooperation and integration and against US interference.
In these years of struggle, three countries of America have been declared literacy-free zones: Venezuela (2005), Bolivia (2008) and Nicaragua (2009).
More than six million people in bloc countries and others have benefited from the miracle mission that restored sight, cured eye diseases, and produced more than 41 million lenses.
You don’t need a magnifying glass to recognize these accomplishments. It is nothing short of trying to hide the fact that in six ALBA-TCP countries more than one million people have been identified as vulnerable and underprotected.
A similar number of them received technical assistance such as prosthetics and were treated in more than two million consultations.
They are numbers that speak.
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