{"id":5164,"date":"2021-09-09T22:45:55","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T22:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/?p=5164"},"modified":"2021-09-09T22:46:00","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T22:46:00","slug":"cuba-one-of-the-few-countries-worldwide-that-manufactures-its-own-medical-oxygen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/cuba-one-of-the-few-countries-worldwide-that-manufactures-its-own-medical-oxygen\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba: One of the Few Countries Worldwide That Manufactures Its Own Medical Oxygen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In mid-August, a piece of news shook Cuba: medical oxygen coverage began to be limited in health centers due to a breakdown in the country\u2019s main production plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the first time during the pandemic that the island was going through such a situation. Cuba has been producing its own oxygen for decades. In fact, it is one of the few countries in the world that has its own plant to supply hospitals, health centers, industries, and other institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fidel Castro had foresight. The OxiCuba S.A. plant was created on the island on October 3, 1965, just a few years after the revolutionary triumph of 1959. Since then, the factory has been supplying every corner of the country, from Guantanamo Province to the Isle of Youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the middle of the health contingency, most countries in the world were forced to import oxygen. Building a liquid oxygen plant is extremely expensive, especially for low-income nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic caught many governments off guard. It is highly unlikely for a government to build an oxygen plant for medical use alone, due to the complexity of the production and its transportation, distribution, and storage system. That is why, when the number of contagions soared around the world, many health systems collapsed due to the lack of this essential input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This did not happen in Cuba, where not a single Covid-19 patient lacked a bottle of oxygen in the Intensive Care Units (ICU).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, after a year and a half of pandemic, the circulation of more contagious and deadly strains of the disease has complicated the epidemiological scenario on the island. Since mid-year, more than 6,000 cases have been reported daily, which has increased the demand for oxygen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This coincided with another reality: the industry has not stopped for a moment for more than a year, even when the machinery needs periods of recession for maintenance work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months ago, the industrial gases plant Oxicuba S.A., located in the Havana municipality of Cotorro, suffered a major breakdown. The rupture of a key part left the plant inoperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country tried to get by with its reserve while juggling to buy new parts and circumvent the blockade, the damn blockade, which prevents the island from accessing everything, especially technologies that are essential to face the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The oxygen deficit occurred while Cuba is going through a deep economic crisis, caused by over six decades of blockade and over one year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The island faces unprecedented food and medicine shortages, making it hard for the government to confront COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the island has the extraordinary ability to achieve the impossible. Just when the oxygen supply began to run low, Cuba did it again. With its creativity to face challenges, it managed to acquire the necessary pieces to set the iron shell in motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Saturday, the island woke up to hopeful news: \u201cOxiCuba S.A. has made it,\u201d President Miguel Diaz-Canel tweeted, referring to the successful repair and start-up of the factory that guarantees 95 percent of the medical oxygen used in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, the Diaz-Canel dialogued with the group of people who made this feat possible. \u201cHas everything gone well so far?\u201d he asked several times during the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo far so good. We are working tirelessly to get out of this situation very soon,\u201d Thermoenergetic engineer Guillermo Mendez Pedraza replied\u2026 And so we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano \u2013 English<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In mid-August, a piece of news shook Cuba: medical oxygen coverage began to be limited in health centers due to a breakdown in the country\u2019s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101011,"featured_media":5165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cuba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5290,"url":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/cuba-accelerates-vaccine-drive\/","url_meta":{"origin":5164,"position":0},"title":"Cuba Accelerates Vaccine Drive","author":"Editorial Team","date":"October 5, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"BY\u00a0HELEN YAFFE \u201cCuba has developed different RBD-based public vaccines, the most administered worldwide (protein-based), and among them the only SARS-CoV-2 conjugate-vaccine (RBD-TT), designed especially for children.\u201d\u2013 Tweet by Fabrizio Chiodo, Italian scientist working with Cuba\u2019s Finlay Institute.[1] Following clinical trials carried out over the summer, on 3 September 2021, Cuba\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Featured"","block_context":{"text":"Featured","link":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/category\/news\/featured\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/abdela.jpeg?fit=960%2C540&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/abdela.jpeg?fit=960%2C540&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/abdela.jpeg?fit=960%2C540&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/abdela.jpeg?fit=960%2C540&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6120,"url":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/chernobyl-children-in-cuba-an-untold-story-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":5164,"position":1},"title":"Chernobyl Children in Cuba: an Untold Story (Part 2)","author":"Editorial Team","date":"April 9, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"March 29, 2022 was the 32nd anniversary of the arrival in Cuba of 139 children from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus; after the impact of the explosion of the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. 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