To the leadership of Save the Children:

Your organization promises to “do whatever it takes” to ensure that every child survives, learns, and is protected. Yet Cuban children are enduring a preventable health crisis while your organization remains publicly silent.

Cuba’s infant mortality rate has risen from 4.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2012 to more than 9 per 1,000 today. Maternity hospitals face serious shortages of neonatal incubators, ventilators, cardiac monitors, obstetric ultrasounds, medicines, vitamins, and other essential supplies. Food insecurity and gaps in prenatal care are also increasing the risks of anemia, premature birth, and dangerously low birthweight.

For more than six decades, the U.S. blockade has restricted Cuba’s access to international markets and financial systems, and now, a U.S.-imposed oil embargo is crippling the country's healthcare system. No child should be denied lifesaving care, no mother should fear losing her baby because a hospital cannot obtain the equipment it needs.

We call on Save the Children to publicly recognize the harm the U.S. blockade inflicts on Cuban children and their right to healthcare. We also call on you to provide material assistance to Cuban pediatric and maternity hospitals.

If “every child” truly means every child, it must include Cuba’s children.

Save the Children: Stand with Cuban mothers and newborns, and call for  an end to the U.S. blockade.