Mick Philips, a US patient with lung cancer, has criticized the US blockade against Cuba, which is forcing him to travel to a third country to get medical treatment here. After his cancer diagnosis, Phillips came to Cuba from Canada, to buy CimaVax, a lung cancer vaccine developed on the island.
Mick Philips, a US patient with lung cancer, has criticized the US blockade against Cuba, which is forcing him to travel to a third country to get medical treatment here. After his cancer diagnosis, Phillips came to Cuba from Canada, to buy CimaVax, a lung cancer vaccine developed on the island.
As a US resident, Phillips is banned from traveling to Cuba and from importing the vaccine under the terms of the trade blockade.
Before Phillips was treated by Cuban specialists, the 68-year-old man had been treated several times with radiation and chemotherapy and his doctor had told him he had no more than a year to live.
Five years later, Philips says as long as he has his doctor in Cuba and access to the lung cancer vaccine, he will stay alive.
Unlike other vaccines, CimaVax is much more specific; and the patient needs a shot only every one or two months.
According to a study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, those who received the vaccine lived for another year.
The response is better in patients with higher levels of he protein called epidermal growth factor in the blood, as is the case with Phillips.
Source: PL