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CODIR welcomes protests demanding democratic change in Iran 

10th January 2026

 Vehicles burn in Tehran as anti-government protests continue

The Committee for the Defence of Iranian People’s Rights (CODIR) has today welcomed demonstrations across Iran, which have put pressure upon the theocratic dictatorship, but warned against intervention by the United States to force Iran in a particular direction.

CODIR General Secretary, Gawain Little, reiterated the solidarity organisation’s position of opposition to the dictatorship while opposing outside intervention today.

“These protests underline the fragility of the regime and how narrow its base of support has become”, said Mr. Little, “the impact of international sanctions, the collapse of the Iranian currency and widespread corruption at every level of government have combined to make it almost impossible for the working people of Iran to live above the poverty line.  The current demonstrations indicate real disillusionment with the current regime and that is only likely to grow. However, these protests need to be driven and decided by the Iranian people, not the diktats of outside forces such as the United States.”

While the BBC and Western media report backing for the deposed monarchy is a feature of the protests, CODIR’s sources inside Iran suggest that this is not a view which enjoys widespread popular support.  At present the protests are focussed on opposing the existing regime without any clear coalescence around an alternative.  Given the repression of opposition groups under the former Shah, a factor leading to the 1979 revolution, there is widespread scepticism that a return to monarchy in Iran would bring any improvement in the lives of working people.

In a recent interview in the United States the former Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, was clear that he does not see his future as being based in Iran, given that his life, family and friends have been based in the United States for the past 40 years.

CODIR welcomed the support of European Parliament President, Roberta Metsola, who has paid tribute to the street protesters praising a “generation  who want to tear off the shackles of oppression.”

Other European leaders have so far been more cautious while US President, Donald Trump, has repeated his threat to intervene if  more people are killed as a result of the protests, having stated last week that the US will “come to their rescue”. Reports suggest that so far, the regime has killed at least 38 people while more than 2,200 others have been detained. 

The current level of protests match those which followed the rigged Presidential election in 2009 and surpass those following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.

As well as the usual show of force the Iranian regime has imposed a countrywide internet shutdown in an attempt to close down channels of communication and prevent protests becoming even more widespread.

CODIR Assistant General Secretary, Jamshid Ahmadi, outlined the dire situation within Iran, stating,

“Widespread strike action has greeted the government’s failure to tackle the issues facing the Iranian people, with protests in the oil industry, the public sector and from pensioners all demonstrating against poor working conditions and a deterioration in the value of earnings. Iranian trade unions and trade unionists are supporting the demand for democratic change in the country. The current wave of protests builds upon these actions and stresses the extent of the Iranian people’s suffering under the dictatorship.” 

CODIR is calling upon all affiliates and the British government to show support for the protesters, in the face of the dictatorial actions of the regime, while opposing any foreign intervention, stressing that the future of Iran must be determined by the Iranian people.

Contact Information for CODIR:-

Postal Address:
B.M.CODIR
London
WC1N 3XX
UK
Website: www.codir.net
E-mail: codir_info@btinternet.com

Further information on CODIR

CODIR is the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights.  It has been established since 1981 and has consistently campaigned to expose human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

CODIR has worked closely with the trade union movement in the UK, the peace movement, all major political parties and Amnesty International to press the case for an end to torture in Iran’s prisons.  Major trade unions in Britain are affiliated to CODIR and support its campaign for peace, human and democratic rights, and social justice in Iran.

CODIR has published Iran Today, its quarterly journal, since 1981, explaining the latest developments in Iran and the most effective way that the British public opinion could demonstrate its solidarity with the people of Iran.

In recent years CODIR has worked closely with Stop the War Coalition and has been vocal against any form of foreign intervention in the internal affairs of the nation.

Solidarity with Venezuela

3rd January 2026

US bombs strike Caracas, Venezuela

British Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, says that he cannot comment on the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife by the United States until he has all of the “facts”.  It is difficult to know which ‘facts’ Starmer is waiting for.  The kidnapping of the Head of a sovereign state, by the armed forces of another state, is surely fact enough upon which to comment, if not condemn outright, as a major transgression of international law.

US President Donald Trump has been ordering US warships to commit acts of international piracy for months, alleging that Maduro is heading a drugs cartel which is running narcotics into the United States.  There is no evidence of this and over 100 people have died so far as a result of US actions in the Caribbean.

The bombing of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, followed by the abduction of Maduro and his wife, is the latest act of terror perpetrated by the Trump administration, allegedly in the name of peace. Only in the twisted logic of Trump can this make any sense.

As a man who desperately craves a Nobel Peace Prize and calls himself a President of peace Trump’s record in his first year in office is nothing short of a catalogue of disaster.

The fuelling of the war in Ukraine, kept going through the sale of US weapons, in spite of Trump’s claims to want to end the conflict, is one example.  The cosying up to the religious fundamentalist government in Israel, perpetrating genocide upon the people of Palestine, killed, maimed and mutilated by US weapons is another.  Weapons sales to Saudi Arabia utilised against the Houthis in Yemen hardly makes for a peaceful solution to the conflict in that country.

Trump green lighted the Israeli attack upon Iran in June then sent his own bombers in to hit Iranian nuclear power facilities.  More recently he has said that he will defend those protesting against the theocratic dictatorship in Iran, a barely veiled threat for another use of force, while also saying that if Iran rebuilds its nuclear or missiles programme he will “knock the hell out of them.”

US missiles have recently hit targets in Nigeria, allegedly in defence of Christians, while the US also turns a blind eye to Israeli incursions into Syria, as well as its illegal occupation, euphemistically termed ‘settler programme’ in the West Bank.

Trump’s desire to turn the fertile land of Gaza into a playground riviera for the rich is not off the table.  The over 60 year illegal blockade of Cuba has intensified since Trump’s return to office. 

The likelihood of Cuba being next in line for the gunfire of US imperialism was given added credence by both Trump and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio in a press conference today (3 January).  The importance of solidarity with Cuba , always crucial, will be even more vital in the coming days and weeks.

The threat to annexe Greenland, because the US “needs” it according to Trump, has not gone away.  Ongoing threats against China continue to be an integral part of the Trump worldview.

It is no surprise that Ukraine has rare earth minerals that the US wants to get its hand on.  Regime change in Iran would give the US access to the vast reserves of oil and gas in that country.  Venezuela has the greatest amount of untapped oil in the world. Greenland is seen to be of strategic military importance for control of the arctic region.

None of this may stop Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize.  Any committee which can make the award to Henry Kissinger for authorising the carpet bombing of Cambodia in the 1970s, or to Venezuelan counter revolutionary Maria Corina Machado for calling for US intervention against her own country, is capable of giving an award to anyone.

The facts are that US imperialism continues to flex its muscles around the world in defence of its own class interests and its own desire for world dominance in both political and military terms.  Trump is simply the visible ugly face behind which a world of forces in the US military industrial complex are positioned.

The attack upon Venezuela must be condemned out of hand.  It is not good enough that Kier Starmer shows no backbone and says that “the UK is not involved”.  Everyone who wants a world free from domination of one state by another, who wants the government of sovereign states to be determined by the people of those states, not by external forces, is ‘involved’.

The international community has not done enough to defend the Cuban people against US economic aggression for decades.  It has not done enough to stop the creeping Israeli colonisation of the West Bank and the genocide in Gaza.  The people of Venezuela must not become the latest victims of international surrender in the face of US imperialism.

The Russians are not Coming

18th December 2025

THE RUSSIANS ARE NOT COMING

No more war

Starmer is lying

The Russians are not coming

That’s a fact

Tell work colleagues

Tell fellow students

Tell the soldiers and their families

Tell Councillors and MPs

Tell neighbours and friends

Tell retired workers

Starmer is lying

The Russians are not coming

That’s a fact

No more austerity

No more cuts or tax rises

Hands off schools

Hands of health and care services

Hands off our children and grandchildren

Starmer is preparing for war

Starmer is lying

That’s a fact

The Russians are NOT coming

Like Many Other Things

This poem is from a slim volume of new and selected poems, Like Many Other Things by Brian Topping, published by the recently established Newcastle based, Valparaiso Arts.

This is Valparaiso Arts first publication.

At only £7 inc p&p all proceeds will go to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

To get your copy simply follow the link below.

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/F4SH749UP8QYE

Together – against the far right

17th December 2025

Two weeks ago, saw the launch of something historic. TOGETHER is an alliance of over 80+ organisations, hundreds of public figures and thousands of everyday people with a simple message: unity against the far right.
Sign up here
Support for TOGETHER includes Sir Lenny Henry, Paloma Faith, Fontaines DC, Leigh Anne Pinnock, Paul Weller and hundreds of other national figures, plus 80+ organisations. The voices of division in Britain are growing louder and more confident. A far right party is topping the polls and they are mobilising the biggest numbers they ever have on the streets. But we can change things when we stand together. Our alliance is aiming to build unity over division, love over hate and hope over fear.  That’s why we’re asking you to sign up, adding your name to the Together Alliance statement.
Add your name to the statement
We know that our strength lies in solidarity and unity. Your support helps make that unity visible and will inspire others to speak out. Together, we can shift the culture. It’s in this spirit that we’ll be mobilising and organising in the build-up to a major national demonstration in London next year on Saturday, 28 March 2026. This is our first public action — and your participation will set the tone, showing that the majority of people in this country stand for unity, not division. Sign up below and join us at this powerful display of solidarity.
Join the demo
Together, we can reject narratives of division and racism; build solidarity across communities; and unite against the far right.  
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Iran – peace will give the Iranian people a chance

8th December 2025

Oil workers in Iran – part of a growing wave of workers taking industrial action

The emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, following the revolution which overthrew the Shah in 1979, and its persistence as a focus for the development of political Islam has increasingly been seen as a threat by Israel. The United States has been equally concerned with the turn of events following 1979 and was instrumental in encouraging the attack upon Iran by Iraq in 1980, which led to the Iran-Iraq war raging from 1980-1988.

The war did not dislodge the Iranian dictatorship but encouraged the intensification of the arrest, torture and execution of dissident voices inside Iran and a consolidation of its control of the state by the medieval theocracy.  The fragile alliance with Iraq, having served its purpose soon saw the US perform a volte face, eventually resulting in the downfall of former ally Saddam Hussein and the fragmentation of Iraq as a functioning state following the invasion of 2003.

It is against this background that the legitimate fears of the Iranian people of further military action must be viewed.  Since the attack upon Iran in June the regime in the Islamic Republic is reported to have significantly increased missile production with a view to generating enough capability to overwhelm Israeli missile defences. Inside Iranian ruling circles the threat of renewed conflict is widely considered high, with some officials and experts suggesting that another war is “only a matter of time”.

Such thinking is fuelled, not only by the desire of the regime to increase its defence capability, but also by reports from reliable Israeli sources that Israel aims to topple the existing regime in Tehran by the end of the term of US President Donald Trump in 2029. Israeli security sources indicate that Israel is preparing to respond “much more aggressively” and for hostilities to last longer than the June conflict.

The religious zealots in the Israeli government view  Iran as an existential threat and, in spite of the degrading of the network of Iran’s proxies in the Middle East notably Hamas and Hezbollah, the ultimate goal remains the elimination of the regime in Iran itself. Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium and increase in missile production are seen as sufficient justification for such an approach.

The current situation is exacerbated by the diplomatic impasse which has existed since the June attacks with efforts to resume nuclear talks between the US and Iran floundering, removing a key channel for de-escalation.

The threat of war, likely to be launched by Israel with the backing of the United States, is clearly the most urgent and pressing issue facing the Iranian people. Wider escalation across the Middle East, which could follow, would be disastrous not only for the people of Iran but would bring closer the prospect of worldwide conflict, given the geo-political significance of Iran for both Russia and China.

In parallel, the debate over access to nuclear facilities attacked in the June assault by the United States continues, with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently passing a resolution requesting access to sites in Fordo and Natanz, which were hit in the strikes.  Iran’s resistance to further inspections of these sites, though it has allowed access to others, is fuelled by the reluctance of the IAEA to condemn the June attacks.

In response to the IAEA resolution Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told reporters that,  “I’m afraid the resolution will have its own consequences”. Asked what those were, he said, “We will announce the consequences later.”

Recent pronouncements from the United States suggest that President Donald Trump may be willing to break the current diplomatic impasse, claiming that Tehran is seeking a diplomatic resolution with Washington, which has sought the dismantlement of its nuclear programme.

“I am totally open to it, and we’re talking to them,” Trump said.

“And we start a process. But it would be a nice thing to have a deal with Iran. And we could have done it before the war, but that didn’t work out. And something will happen there, I think.”

The actions of the US in giving Israel the green light to attack Iran when negotiations were ongoing, and the subsequent US role in attacking nuclear sites, make it difficult to take Trump’s words at face value.  There is no doubt that a section of the corrupt leadership in Tehran realises that its survival depends upon some rapprochement with the West, while more hardline factions are reluctant to engage in anything they would regard as compromise.

Perhaps the only certainty in the current situation is that the main losers are the Iranian people who, as well as the threat of external intervention, are also having to struggle with the impact of international sanctions, endemic corruption within the state and widespread economic mismanagement.

The response of Iranian workers to the collapsing political and economic environment they face has been to increase their demand for recognition, fair pay and employment rights. Strike action in the oil industry, the transport sector, the public sector and amongst pensioners has demonstrated the extent of internal resistance to the policies of the regime.

The regime continues to respond with the arrest, imprisonment and torture of trade union, cultural and academic activists, underlining its inability to fulfil the needs of its people and resort only to force to maintain its position.

The future of Iran ultimately must lie with its people and their resistance to the theocratic dictatorship, opposition to the pressures of external intervention and the demands for a non-aligned democratic Iran. Opposing war against Iran is the first step in this process and one which should be a priority for international solidarity work in the coming year.  Only peace will give the people of Iran the chance they deserve.

The full text of this article appears in Liberation Journal, Winter 2025

https://liberationorg.co.uk/journal-2/

Nobel Provocation

11th October 2025

It is hard to think of a worse candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than US President, Donald Trump.  Not just because of the brazen campaign run by him and his supporters to try and secure the award.  The ongoing role of the US in selling arms and fuelling conflicts around the world is an even more significant factor.

Benjamin Netanyahu, given his role in the genocide perpetrated in Gaza, would be as bad a candidate.  The actual recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize 2025, Maria Corina Machado, was a shock to progressive movements arond the world, as she also has no claim to the award.  The opinion piece below by Michelle Ellner, for Venezuela Analysis, explains why.

Machado certainly wasted no time in trying to take advantage of the profile associated with the award. Her first call was to Donald Trump, to thank him for his support in stationing US warships off the coast of Venezuela. Trump’s pretext for such action has been to allegedly stop drug traffiking but the US has been looking to take advantage of Venezuela’s oil reserves for some time and is clearly stepping up the pressure now that Trump has returned to the Presidency.

Details of the aggressive nature of US actions and the fear for direct military intervention have been raised in Britain by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Find out more here

https://www.venezuelasolidarity.co.uk/2025/10/08/we-will-blow-you-out-of-existence-trumps-caribbean-spectacle/

When Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘Peace’ Has Lost Its Meaning

by Michelle Ellner

Maria Corina Machado is known for her incendiary speeches 

When I saw the headline Maria Corina Machado wins the Peace Prize, I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about rewarding someone whose politics have brought so much suffering. Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.

If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents.

She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.

Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom,” She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.

Machado has spent her entire political life promoting division, eroding Venezuela’s sovereignty and denying its people the right to live with dignity.

This is who Maria Corina Machado really is:

  • She helped lead the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew a democratically elected president, and signed the Carmona Decree that erased the Constitution and dissolved every public institution overnight.
  • She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.
  • She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narcotrafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.
  • She pushed for the U.S. sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class. 
  • She helped construct the so-called “interim government” a Washington backed puppet show run by a self-appointed “president” who looted Venezuela’s resources abroad while children at home went hungry.
  • She vows to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem, aligning herself openly with the same apartheid state that bombs hospitals and calls it self-defense.
  • Now she wants to hand over the country’s oil, water, and infrastructure to private corporations. This is the same recipe that made Latin America the laboratory of neoliberal misery in the 1990s.

Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren’t “peaceful protests” as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it “resistance.”

She praises Trump’s “decisive action” against what she calls a “criminal enterprise,” aligning herself with the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE’s watch, while Venezuelan mothers search for their children disappeared by U.S. migration policies.

Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism, an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.

If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado? Maybe next year they’ll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for “compassion under occupation.”

Every time this award is handed to an architect of violence disguised as diplomacy, it spits in the face of those who actually fight for peace: the Palestinian medics digging bodies from rubble, the journalists risking their lives in Gaza to document the truth and the humanitarian workers of the Flotilla sailing to break the siege and deliver aid to starving children in Gaza, with nothing but courage and conviction.

But real peace is not negotiated in boardrooms or awarded on stages. Real peace is built by women organizing food networks during blockades, by Indigenous communities defending rivers from extraction, by workers who refuse to be starved into obedience, by Venezuelan mothers mobilizing to demand the return of children seized under U.S. ICE and migration policies and by nations that choose sovereignty over servitude. That’s the peace Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and every nation of the Global South deserves.

Tell the Nobel Committee: The Peace Prize belongs to Gaza’s journalists, not María Corina Machado!

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

About us

Fascism is Coming

2nd September 2025

Fascism is Coming

by Brian Topping

Fascism is coming
Hoisting red white and blue

The red is right-wing Labour
Facilitating with false promises

The blue is where nothing is true
Tories muse on how far they can go

The white is working class
Blaming black for its troubles

But what is coming
Waits wearing a smile like a hyaena

Watching its prey
Limping towards destruction

More poems by Brian Topping are available from Valparaiso Arts.

At only £7 inc p&p all proceeds will go to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

To get your copy of his collection, Like Many Other Things, simply follow the link below.

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/F4SH749UP8QYE

Don’t Leave Nagasaki

9th August 2025

In a debate in the House of Commons in 2016, on the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine capability, then Prime Minister, Theresa May, was asked point blank if she would be prepared to use these weapons of mass destruction. Her equally blunt response was that yes, she would, on the basis that there is no point in having a deterrent unless you are prepared to use it. There is an inexorable logic to May’s position, if you believe that possessing nuclear weapons has a deterrent effect.

There is no evidence that nuclear weapons do deter, any more than there is any absolute evidence that they do not. So the real motivation behind whatever position is taken on the issue has to be a mix of the political, the moral and the humanitarian.

The war crimes committed by the United States of America, in dropping nuclear bombs upon the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, have never been acknowledged as war crimes. History, written by the victors as ever, records the use of nuclear weapons as having brought an end to the war in the Far East more quickly. That at least is the generally accepted wisdom. The fact that the war in the Far East was all but over, and the Japanese were seeking mediation through the Soviet Union to end the war, an outcome that the United States could not countenance, finds little airspace.

This poem was written in 2015 on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the bombings. Then, as now with the eightieth anniversary, Hiroshima gained much news coverage, due to being the first, while Nagasaki received less attention, hence the subject of the poem.

Not long after writing this poem I read the first hand account, Hiroshima by John Hersey, first published in the New Yorker in August 1946 and now published as a Penguin paperback. It is probably the most harrowing 100 pages of journalism you are ever likely to read.

The debate about Trident is not the major political fault line in 2025 that it was in 2016.  The Tories, and no doubt Reform, are emphatic in their defence of Britain retaining nuclear weapons.  In the debate in 2016 then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was categorical in his opposition to the recommissioning of Trident and vowed never, under any circumstances, to resort to the use of nuclear weapons. 

Current Labour leader, Kier Starmer, has made no such commitment.  On the contrary, Starmer actively commits to and embraces Britain’s role as part of the NATO war machine.

The possession of nuclear weapons and membership of NATO are subjects on which we all must all take a stand, a stand in opposition to either.

Don’t Leave Nagasaki

Little Boy pushed his way to the front,
Had to be first in the queue.
Fat Man groaned as the boy shoved past,
‘Hey son, I was there too.’

In the cold war light the atomic flash
Turned people to shadows on the floor,
Shedding thousands of tears in the eighty years,
Since opening the nuclear door.

Don’t leave Nagasaki burning
With the shame of this regret
Don’t leave Nagasaki wondering
Why no justice yet?

At The Hague they try war criminals
So the world can understand,
But there is no space to try the case
Of the melting of Japan.

The United States stands for freedom,
The United States stands for law.
Is there anyone outside of the United States
Who believes that, anymore?

Don’t leave Nagasaki burning
With the burden of this war crime.
Don’t leave Nagasaki thinking
That there could even be a next time.

Steve Bishop

Note

Little Boy was the name given to the atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. Fat Man was the name given to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, on 9th August 1945. Over 200,000 people died as a result of the bombings. Tens of thousands more have died subsequently from burns and radiation.

More medical aid en route to Cuba

24th July 2025

With your help, the Cuba Vive appeal hopes to raise over £200,000 by the end of the year

Eighteen months after its launch, the Cuba Vive Medical Appeal for Cuba has raised more than £190,000 and will hopefully surpass £200,000 by the end of the year. Thanks to the generosity of CSC members, affiliates and friends, hundreds of thousands of items of essential medical supplies, from syringes to surgical gloves, are being used by Cuban health workers to improve and save the lives of patients.

Second container on its way with more scheduled for 2025
Another 40ft container of life-saving medical aid departed from the Yorkshire port of Immingham in July and is due to arrive in Cuba in late August.

The container is packed full of much-needed resources such as catheters, tracheostomy equipment, syringes, needles, surgical scrub, colostomy bags, wheelchairs, Zimmer frames, crutches, and specialist operating theatre supplies including eight operating beds.

This is the second container of aid (of three consignments sent so far) that will be delivered working in partnership with UK charity Jacob’s Well Appeal, who organise the logistics, including sorting, storage, packing and shipping. A further container will leave later this summer, and more by the end of the year.

First aid kits for every residential education centre
The container includes over 200 first aid packs for every educational residential establishment in Cuba. They form part of medical aid funded by the National Education Union (NEU) for each of the country’s 147 residential schools for children in rural areas and 54 children’s homes.

The NEU is responding to a special request from the Cuban education union SNTECD since the shortages in the Cuban health service also impact the education sector. These are especially acute in educational care and residential settings, where everything from basic first aid kits to PPE and paediatric medical supplies are scarce.

Cuba Vive aid supports Cuban cancer hospital

In May, CSC director Rob Miller visited Havana’s Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology, one of the hospitals that has benefited from the Cuba Vive appeal, and spoke to staff and patients about how the medical aid was helping their work and treatment.

Find out more at https://www.cubavive.org.uk/