Red Zone – Cuba and the battle against Ebola in West Africa

By Enrique Ubieta Gómez

Pathfinder Press – 2019

Reviewed by Steven Halpern

The coronavirus has alerted the world that communicable viral diseases are a threat to humanity. Within weeks, this virus has spread throughout the world and is now in Pennsylvania.

To get an idea of how deadly viruses can be, there was the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918 that probably originated in Kansas. This influenza killed more people in the United States than all the wars of the twentieth century combined. Philadelphia was one of the cities with the highest death toll at about 1,200. The world death toll from this influenza might have reached fifty million.

So, the question is: What is an effective strategy of fighting these viruses? The Cuban journalist Enrique Ubieta Gómez begins to answer that question in his book, Red Zone – Cuba and the battle against Ebola in West Africa. This is not only the report on an effective effort to combat Ebola, this is a genuinely heroic story.

In the year 2014, the Ebola virus was ravaging the West African nations claiming the lives of thousands in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. The President of Sierra Leone, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, sent a letter to the Cuban President Raúl Castro asking for medical assistance. What kind of medical assistance would be needed to combat the Ebola virus?

First, we need to understand that Ebola is a highly communicable disease where skin contact can lead to a fatal infection in just a matter of days. So, volunteers for this mission could very well die because of an exposure to Ebola. Then, there was the question of telling one’s family that they would be volunteering for a mission that could cost their life. Then, there was the real possibility that medical volunteers could bring the virus back to Cuba and expose eleven million Cubans and the entire Western Hemisphere to a lethal virus.

For these reasons, the developed nations contributed money to fight Ebola, but there were few volunteers willing to risk their lives. Cuba rapidly recruited 256 highly experienced medical volunteers to battle the virus in the three West African nations. Why was the relatively small nation of Cuba able to mobilize these volunteers to fight Ebola?

A central goal of the present Cuban government has been to elevate or assist the poorest Cubans as well as the indigent people of the world. Because of that perspective, Fidel Castro spoke at the United Nations and reported that Cuba would eliminate illiteracy on the island in just a few years after the Cuban Revolution. At that time, the Cuban literacy rate was about twenty-three percent.

The new Cuban government mobilized young and older volunteers to go to remote areas of the island to teach everyone how to read. As a result, Cuba overcame illiteracy in just a few years. That literacy drive paved the way for the fact that today Cuba has about 85,000 doctors, perhaps more doctors, per capita and any other nation in the world. 

As early as 1962, when Cuba only had about 3,000 doctors, they were giving medical support to the nation of Algeria. Then, in the year 2005 Cuba mobilized 1,500 doctors and nurses to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina. This contingent was named Henry Reeve after a New Yorker who volunteered to join Cuba’s independence revolution against Spain in the nineteenth century. The United States government refused to accept this assistance for hurricane victims.

Then, the Henry Reeve Contingent went to Pakistan where they set up 32 field hospitals to treat patients living in an area where that experienced a devastating earthquake. At the time of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, there were 32 Cuban medical brigades operating in nations throughout Africa. Between the years of 1960 and 2014, Cuba had extended medical solidarity to 109 nations.

Once the Cubans arrived in West Africa they were met with several seemingly impossible challenges. In order to treat Ebola patients, the Cuban volunteers needed to wear hermetically sealed body suits. They needed to do this in temperatures of 122 degrees Fahrenheit. By merely touching the outside of this body suit after treating an Ebola patient, a medical practitioner could be exposed to this deadly virus.

While there is no known cure for Ebola, patients can survive the disease if their symptoms are treated. However, because of the centuries of colonialism and underdevelopment, the populations of these West African nations have a history of poor health, high rates of infant mortality, as well as large percentages of illiteracy.

While the Cuban doctors were effective in saving many lives, many of their initial patients died from the effects of Ebola. So, the initial response of some people living in this region was not to trust those white doctors in strange suits who treated people who died. The Cubans needed to establish relations with the people to establish the trust that necessary to save people’s lives.

Because of the six-month effort by the Henry Reeve Contingent in West Africa, the Ebola virus was greatly contained. There were no reported cases of Ebola in Cuba after the medial volunteers returned to the island.

The New York Times ran a story on October 18, 2014 titled “Cuba’s Impressive Role on Ebola.” This article stated: “The global panic over Ebola has not brought forth an adequate response from the nations with the most to offer. While the United States and several other wealthy countries have been happy to pledge funds, only Cuba and a few nongovernmental organizations are offering what is most needed: medical professionals in the field…”

This article is an exception from the generally hostile articles in the press about the nation of Cuba. Enrique Gómez’ book Red Zone gives us a completely different view of the island. Today as the coronavirus is spreading around the world, the Cuban Henry Reeve Contingent in West Africa gives us a clear example of how to deal with these lethal viruses.

Steven Halpern lives and writes in Philadelphia. He was a member of two Cuba International May Day Brigades in 2017 and 2019. There he learned about the Cuban reality with hundreds of Brigade members from around the world. Steven Halpern has also had letters published in the Philadelphia Inquirer for over thirty years.