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Foreign Minister Pérez Roque in Honduras
Opens ophthalmological hospital
donated by the island
CUBAN Foreign Minister Felipe
Pérez Roque has arrived in Tegucigalpa to sign
bilateral cooperation agreements and open an
ophthalmological hospital donated by Cuba, PL
reports from the Honduran capital.
According to a communiqué from
the Honduran Foreign Ministry, Pérez Roque is to
have talks with President José Manuel Zelaya and
Foreign Minister Milton Jiménez.
The Cuban minister’s agenda
includes a visit to the Villa de San Francisco
community, 20 kilometers east of the capital, where
he is to open the ophthalmological hospital donated
by Cuba.
The communiqué also notes that he
is to meet with the island’s medical mission in
Honduras.
The Cuban medical brigades
arrived in that country a few days after the
disaster provoked by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and
were deployed to the poorest areas where there were
no Honduran doctors.
Since then, these professionals,
who lend their services free of charge, have
acquired an exceptional prestige among the
population and their achievements are reflected in
Honduran health indices.
The infant mortality rate has
dropped to 10.1 per 1,000 live births and that of
maternal mortality to 22.4 in the areas where they
are working. According to statistics, in the rest of
national territory those figures are at 30.8 and
48.1, respectively.
This is Pérez Roque’s second
visit to that Central American country.
The first was in December 1998.
Tegucigalpa reestablished diplomatic relations with
Havana on January 26, 2002. However, at the present
time, there is no named ambassador on the island,
although the Zelaya administration has announced an
appointment in March.
Both nations have furthered their
relations on the basis of the arrival of the first
Cuban brigadistas in the wake of Mitch.
Currently, there are 300 doctors
lending their services here. At the same time,
around 1,000 young Hondurans are studying in Cuba,
800 of them in Medicine. This March 3, another group
of 70 Hondurans is to travel to the island to study
that profession.
Translated by Granma
International
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