ARGENTINA urged its citizens to sign a proclamation welcoming Cuban doctors to the country and demanding an end to the crippling US blockade as medics arrived from the socialist island today.

Signatories including the president of the Grandmothers of Plaza Mayo – a group that campaigns to find children stolen and illegally adopted under the country’s military dictatorship – Estela de Carlotto and actors Cecilia Roth and Cristina Banega welcomed 200 Cuban health professionals to Argentina as part of efforts to tackle the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The statement insisted that Covid-19 requires “unity and solidarity between peoples and nations,” with health a “universal human right.

“Today, it is about preserving the lives of millions of people, without exceptions, and this is what is most important. The virus kills without respecting borders or ideologies,” it said.

Argentina has nearly 4,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 192 recorded deaths as of today.

“We will need more medical and nursing personnel, and for this we cannot rule out the need to resort to international co-operation,” the signatories said.

It called on Argentinians to reject “the US campaign against Cuban medical collaboration in the world which today is part of the aggressiveness and intensification of the blockade against that brother country.”