Oil Blockade on Cuba Heightens Humanitarian Crisis

Trade Embargo Must be Lifted

Tell the US Government to Stop Killing Children with Sanctions

Press Release, February 20, 2026

SanctionsKill/Americas Without Sanctions

In January the Trump administration ordered a blockade of oil to Cuba, threatening high tariffs on any country “that directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.” With Venezuelan oil deliveries already blocked, the island nation has not received any fuel shipments this year, impacting hospitals, schools, transportation, food production, and even garbage collection.

Cuba was already suffering a humanitarian crisis due to the tightening of the six-decades-long US trade embargo, which punishes other countries and financial institutions for any transactions with Havana. Consequently, the island cannot import medicines and health supplies, food, or spare parts needed to keep infrastructure such as water and electrical systems running. Cuba, long a model of primary healthcare, has sadly seen a rise in infant mortality with the collapse of its health system.

This is but one example of how economic coercive measures kill children. The most comprehensive study to date of economic sanctions, published in 2025 in the prestigious, peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, found that economic coercive measures—especially the sanctions imposed by the US government—cause over 560,000 deaths worldwide every year, and a majority of the dead are children under 5.

The SanctionsKill campaign is inviting health workers around the United States to sign our letter to the US government urging it to stop the use of unilateral coercive measures because they are as deadly as armed conflict and primarily kill children. The letter will be presented to the US Congress and Executive Branch this spring. As the letter concludes:

This is a global public health crisis caused by US government policy. We implore you to fulfill your inescapable obligation to end it, as surely as you would prohibit the use of a defective medicine or faulty equipment causing comparable harm.

Imposing such collective punishment on the innocent is morally reprehensible. It must stop.”

Please read the full letter here and sign if you are a Health Worker!

The letter has already been signed by some prominent health workers, including Margaret Flowers, MD, a pediatrician and long-time health reform advocate; Amy Hagopian, PhD, professor emeritus, University of Washington, and former chair, International Health Section of the American Public Health Association; Nidal Jboor, MD, co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide; and Ana Malinow, MD of National Single Payer.

Health workers are invited to sign the letter here. We will soon be asking constituents to send this letter to their representatives, urging them to pass H.R.7521 and S.136, the United States-Cuba Trade Act to repeal the embargo on Cuba.