U.S. government refuses entry visa to Cuban minister of public health

The U.S. government has refused an entry visa for the second year running to José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, Cuba’s minister of health, who was to participate in a meeting from September 25 to 29 of the Directors Board of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), the institution’s highest body, which meets once a year with participation by the health ministers of member nations.

Cuba has always been represented at these meetings by its health minister, as part of our country’s active participation in the work of that hundred-year-old organization, of which it is a founding member and a member of its executive committee.

Dagoberto Rodríguez Barrera, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington D.C., protested the U.S. government’s refusal to issue a visa to the Cuban health minister, thus depriving him of fulfilling his duties to that organization. In remarks to the Board on September 25, Rodríguez Barrera qualified the refusal as a crude mockery by the U.S. government with respect to its duties as the country that hosts the international agency; an open violation of the letter and the spirit of the regulations governing the PAHO, and an attack on the right of a member state and on the organization’s charter. He also said that the meeting should take a stand against this anti-Cuba action by the U.S. government.

Rodríguez Barrera said that if the U.S. government’s intention is to silence Cuba’s voice and block efforts by our country to extend its international medical cooperation, it is mistaken.
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