Global Medical Outreach 2008-- a news chronology

(From stories compiled by FOCAL, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas)

January 4: At least 20 health facilities, including hospitals, education centers and polyclinic-faculties are in operation in Jaguey Grande, Matanzas province, as part of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). A report from the health department in Matanzas, 55 miles east of Havana, says that about 5,000 students from 14 countries benefit from these programs, designed to train physicians and nursing staff free of charge. This large mass of students, the text adds, come from Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Pakistan, Timor Leste and Peru. (Prensa Latina, 4/1/08)

January 11: More than a million people have been operated on 31 countries up to the end of 2007 as part of the Operation Miracle program sponsored since 2004 by Cuba and Venezuela with the goal of restoring the eyesight of 6 million patients by the year 2016, the local media reported. A total of 1,003,238 patients have already been operated on three continents, according to information disseminated at National Scientific Ophthalmology Day held at the mariscal Antonio Jose de Sucre Hospital in the Cuban town of Jagüey Grande in the western province of Matanzas. Attending the conference were some 500 ophthalmology specialists and directors of centers in countries participating in Operation Milagro, including coordinators of the program in Ecuador and Argentina, the daily Granma reported. (EFE, 12/1/08)

January 12: In a bid to further strengthen relations between both Caribbean territories, particularly in the areas of health and education, Cuban Ambassador to Jamaica Gisela Garcia Rivera said her embassy is hoping to send more Jamaican students to Cuba to pursue studies in medicine and other areas of scholarship. Speaking with the press at the Cuban embassy in Kingston, Ambassador Garcia pointed out that presently there are approximately 27,500 students from 120 countries studying in Cuba. Of that number, more than 400 are from Jamaica. "Last year, we received 290 applications for scholarships to study medicine, but we could only offer 17 scholarships for medicine and nine for other specialties. So this year, if it's possible, we are hoping to send more students to Cuba and also send some of that 290 that were not successful last year," Garcia told the press. "This month, we will start receiving applications for next year." (Jamaica Observer, 14/1/08)

February 14: Brazil flew 50,000 doses of yellow fever vaccine into Paraguay and Peru promised 250,000 more doses next week, as the government said it was expanding a vaccination campaign against the first outbreak of the disease in 34 years. Five cases of yellow fever detected in a remote Paraguayan farm community have touched off unease in South America's second-poorest country and prompted public health officials to make international appeals for vaccine stocks. ''We are making additional requests'' with Taiwan and Cuba, said Paraguay's public health minister, Oscar Martinez. (The New York Times, 14/2/08)

February 16: Cuba will send doses of yellow fever vaccine to Paraguay following an outbreak that has already killed two persons in the South American country, President Nicanor Duarte announced. "The Cuban friends will arrive with their plane for Operation Miracle and they will also bring the vaccines", Duarte said. Yellow fever had not been registered in that nation for 34 years. (Prensa Latina, 16/2/08)

February 26: The Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) "is an eminent symbol of the international vocation of Cuba," said Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, after meeting with a group of students at the institution. The Secretary of State of Pope Benedicto XVI received an explanation on the efforts of ELAM from the administration as well as from Jose M. Miyar, Secretary of the Council of State and Yilliam Jimenez, Vice Minister for International Cooperation at the Foreign Ministry. After learning about the project, Cardinal Bertone said that at ELAM the ideas of cooperation and solidarity become reality; “the solidarity with the poorest and neediest," in a world where the right to health care is not for all, he noted. Later in his tour, the Vatican official praised the role of Cuba in conceiving the highly professional medical school where values of "integral humanism" are promoted, precepts he said coincide with the Catholic Church. (Granma, 27/2/08)

February 26: One hundred young students from Nicaragua will be selected to study medicine in Cuba. The selection process has been undertaken by the Youth Institute of the Central American country. Benita Arbizu, deputy director of the Nicaraguan institution, explained that people from communities located far from the capital of the country —such as Rio San Juan, Chinandega and other departments— will have priority in the selection process. Around 2,000 Nicaraguans are currently studying medicine in several facilities of the Latin American Medical School in Cuba, while nearly a hundred have become doctors in Cuba. (Prensa Latina, 28/2/08)

February 26: Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba sent teams to Paraguay to try to help authorities control a yellow fever outbreak that has killed three people and sickened at least 13, including some living near the capital, Asuncion. Medical, laboratory and insect specialists from the three countries joined Paraguay health officials as local authorities used the army, police and schools to promote insect control and vaccination programs, the Pan American Health Organization said in a statement. Seven cases have been found in young people from San Pedro department who visited rural areas where they contracted a jungle variant of the virus spread by mosquitoes among monkeys and humans, the organization said. (Bloomberg, 27/2/08)

February 28: Cuba supplies aid to a number of countries and one of the biggest aid schemes is in Bolivia. "There is usually a love interest behind it all, if you ask me," says Dr Maria de los Angeles, a sparky woman from Guines, not far from Havana, director of the Cuban-Venezuelan eye hospital at El Alto, 13,000 feet up (3,962m) in the High Andes. Discussing why a very small number of the 2,000 Cuban medical personnel sent to Bolivia from the island over the past two years have jumped ship and gone home, Dr Mabel, an attractive young eye surgeon from Pinar del Rio, the western-most province of Cuba, says that “there's no pack of parties here." In a score of general hospitals built mainly with Venezuelan money over the past two years, 2,000 Cuban medical staff including 1,300 qualified doctors have been at work. They have provided more than nine million consultations. In particular, Maria de los Angeles, Mabel, and her colleagues have carried out 200,000 operations in ophthalmological units up and down Bolivia. So popular are they, that the units built on the frontiers with Peru and Argentina have treated more Peruvians and Argentines than Bolivians. "We treat anyone who walks in, and we do it for nothing," says Maria de los Angeles. In the other Cuban hospitals in Bolivia, services go from preventative medicine - which has pushed down infant mortality and pushed up life expectancy - to general healthcare and emergency operations. (BBC, 28/2/08)

March 11: The President of Uruguay, Tabare Vazquez, highlighted the benefits received by his people thanks to the Cuban cooperation for the inauguration of a modern ophthalmological center in Montevideo. During a ceremony held in Paso de los Toros, a central locality in Uruguay, Vazquez said: “we have a top level ophthalmological center thanks to the cooperation of our Cuban brothers and sisters and the government of the island.” The Hospital of the Eyes, as Uruguayans call it, was inaugurated last November by President Vazquez. (ACN, 12/3/08)

March 18: During the current month, the Cuban Embassy in Pakistan has held three meetings with groups of Pakistani students who were selected to study Medicine in Cuba, said a spokesman of the Cuban embassy. The spokesman said these students are part of the 1,000 free of charge-scholarships granted by the Cuban government to Pakistan after the devastating earthquake that affected the country in October 2005. These meetings took place in the cities of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad and were organized by the Cuban Embassy with the cooperation of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC), he added. (PPI, 18/3/08)

March 25: Cuban Public Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer arrived in Beijing on an official visit, invited by Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu. His agenda in China also includes meeting with other officials of the sector, and presiding over the official opening of the China-Cuba Friendship joint ophthalmologic hospital of Hebi city, Henan province. A Cuban ophthalmologic team has already carried out thousands of inquiries in that population and its surroundings to learn of several eye pathologies, prior to the work to be started in the coming days. The hospital will have one hundred beds and the most modern equipment, to diagnose and treat eye afflictions. (Prensa Latina, 25/3/08)

March 30: Fidel Castro highlighted the labor carried out by the Cuban medical brigade in Peru, after the August 15, 2007 earthquake hit that Andean nation. In an article entitled "The Detachment Returns, Undefeated," the Cuban Revolution leader stated, "the glorious pages in history they have written cannot be erased. Such dignity and conscience are a bulwark against the rusted armaments of imperialism." "The earthquake," Fidel Castro wrote, "took place on August 15, 2007. It measured 7.9 on the Richter scale. The detachment arrived in Cuzco on August 18. Their two-month relief work plan had been designed to address the most urgent needs." "The real needs were to require more than double this time. They saw 153,292 patients, 65,299 of whom were visited in their homes. They remained in Peru until March 25, 2008, seven months and seven days," the article says. [El destacamento regresa invicto] (Prensa Latina, 31/3/08)

March 31: Cuba plans to expand its medical cooperation program from the current 73 countries to 81 nations during this year, expanding its presence in the Pacific region, officials said. We are "working to train the new groups of aid workers who will travel soon to different countries," the head of the Public Health Ministry's aid unit, Alberto Gonzalez, told state media. The new medical teams will be sent to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Nauru and Papua New Guinea, all in the Pacific, as well as Congo and Benin, in Africa, and the Southeast Asian nation of Laos. Currently, Cuba has health cooperation agreements with 73 countries, the majority of them in Latin America and Africa, with a total of 36,578 doctors and other health-care workers in its medical brigades. (EFE, 31/3/08)

April 14: Bulgaria Health Care Minister Radoslav Gaidarski left for an official visit to Cuba that will continue until April 18. By the time of the visit Minister Gaidarski will meet Cuba's Minister of Public Health doctor Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera. Both ministers will sign a Memorandum of co-operation in the health care sector. The document foresees the establishment of collaboration between the Bulgarian Bul Bio - National Centre for the treatment of infectious and parasitic diseases, and Cuba’s Institute for Tropical Diseases and the Centre for vaccine's production. (News Bg, 14/4/08)

April 17: Cuban Foreign Affairs Vice Minister Bruno Rodriguez arrived in Guatemala, where he will take part in the opening of an ophthalmologic center equipped by Cuba, at the Guatemalan western department of San Marcos. He will be received by Guatemalan Foreign Minister Haroldo Rodas, and will keep contact with Cuban doctors working in Guatemala. The center has up-to-date technology and will guarantee free medical attention to hundreds of thousands of people with low incomes. More than 20 Cuban helpers will work in the center, the third of its kind equipped by Cuba in Guatemala. After the inauguration, the Cuban delegation will tour places in Huehuetenango, Totonicapan and Retalhuleu, where Cuban public health personnel is working. A total of 400 Cuban public health workers are working in 18 of the 22 Guatemalan departments. (Prensa Latina, 17/4/08)

April 17: Acting president of Guatemala, Rafael Espada, thanked the government and people of Cuba for cooperating in setting up an ophthalmologic center built in the western department of San Marcos. "It is a very beautiful center that I was able to visit a few weeks ago and has high tech equipment that will be very useful in this region that has many patients with eye problems," Espada told the press. The modern installation that will be inaugurated on April 18, will have two surgery wards to attend low income patients with operations of several problems such as cataracts, tissue growth and cysts. There are about twenty Cuban cooperators that include two surgeons, one clinician, nurses and technicians to work in the hospital and it is the third of its kind equipped by Cuba in this country. "The installation of state-of-the-art technology and well-prepared specialists that were generously supplied by the Cuban government will help the elderly," added Joaquin Molina of the Pan American Health Organization. (Prensa Latina, 17/4/08)

May 4: A Cuban team headed by the chairman of the Arab-Cuban Friendship Association, Dr. Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, who is also member of the Health Care Commission of the National Assembly (Parliament), visited Yemen. During the visit, the Cuban team toured several hospitals and health facilities in Yemen and met the military and civil officials working in medical and therapeutic institutions. The team also met officials from the Youth & Sports Ministry, sports coaches, and Cuban doctors and academics working in Sana’a. “I met many executive officials in Yemeni government and Parliament. We discussed the various aspects of developing distinctive ties between both partner countries, plus the arrangements underway for holding the joint governmental committee that is projected to meet next November,” said Cambras in reference to the reasons for his visit. Thirty-six years have passed since Yemen and Cuba first established bilateral political, economic, technical and scientific relations. (Yemen Times, 4/5/08)

May 6: Cuba’s solidarity work in the field of public health is increasing in Mozambique where specialists from the Caribbean nation will help create a Research Center for Transmissible Diseases. Sources of the Mozambican Ministry of Sciences and Technology highlighted the importance of this new action of the Cuban collaborators in this African country as part of recent bilateral agreements. (Ahora, 6/5/08)

May 27: Some 4.5 tons of Cuban medical aid arrived in Chengdu City, capital of the Chinese province of Sichuan to help treat the victims of last May 12 earthquake. The donation, consisting of serums and other medications was transferred to the local People´s Hospital “Number One” in Chengdu by members of one of the medical brigades that make up the “Henry Reeves” Cuban Medical internationalist contingent. The Cuban emergency assistance includes the medications plus 35 doctors, nurses and paramedical personnel who were assigned to two hospital wards where they are treating evacuees from the quake hard hit areas, said Cuban surgeon Jose Rodriguez. (ACN, 27/5/08)

May 27: Fidel Castro sent a message to Hospital No. 1 in Chengdu, in the Chinese province of Sichuan, stating that they can count on the services of the Cuban medical brigade as long as necessary, reported Granma newspaper. Dr. Jose Rodriguez, who heads the Cuban brigade assisting earthquake victims in Sichuan, delivered the message from the Cuban leader to hospital director Li Yuan Feng. Castro told the hospital authorities that Cuba has more well trained medical personnel eager to help the sister nation of China in the Chengdu region if the Chinese government wishes. The 35-member group of doctors and paramedics arrived to China on May 23. (ACN, 27/5/08)