UN Elects Cuba to Chair World Health Assembly Even as Cubans Lack Aspirin, Basic Health

The UN today elected Cuban Health Minister Roberto Tomas Morales Ojeda to chair its 2014 World Health Assembly.

Cuban media hails decision; UN Watch condemns "UN handing propaganda victory to a dictatorship"

unwatch.org

GENEVA, May 19 – The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch criticized the UN's election today of Cuba to chair the 67th World Health Assembly, with executive director Hillel Neuer saying the decision "wrongly hands a coveted propaganda victory to a dictatorship that imprisons journalists and brutalizes human rights defenders," and that it "enables Cuba to further perpetuate myths about a health system that is in fact crumbling, with desperate citizens reduced to asking tourists to bring them Aspirin and other basic medicines."

The consensus election today by 194 WHO member states chose the sole candidate, Cuban Health Minister Roberto Tomas Morales Ojeda.

"Why is the UN placing the world's health in the hands of a government that practices medical Apartheid, with privileged clinics for medical tourists, while its own impoverished citizens are denied Aspirin and other basic medicines, with public hospitals that deny their patients running water or working toilets?" asked Neuer.

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