The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) are key actors in the application of the Abdala anti-COVID-19 vaccine to the population over 19 years of age, in Las Tunas municipality.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- As of July 29, more than 158 thousand residents of the provincial capital receive the first dose, a process in which the CDRs are responsible for informing each citizen when they will have to go to their respective vaccination center.

"With enough time in advance, we met with health specialists, who trained all our grassroots leaders on what vaccination would be like," Yenisey Fernández, an official of the Provincial Directorate of the mass organization, said.

She and her colleagues have stood out in the 105 clinical sites established for this purpose in this eastern Cuban city. They are also there to ensure that unnecessary crowds of people do not occur and that “Abdala” also reaches the shoulders of those with reduced mobility because some 795 residents cannot leave their homes due to various health conditions.

Together with the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the CDRs are in each of the neighborhoods and rural communities of Las Tunas, and their presidents and zone coordinators are who better know the specificities of each of these spaces. Therefore, they are the ideal collaborators to carry out health actions that involve broad segments of the Cuban population.

In fact, in the first half of 1962, less than two years after its founding, the largest mass organization in the country took part in the massive immunization campaign against poliomyelitis, the first undertaken by the Cuban revolutionary government.