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Healthcare within everyone's reach
Elson Concepción
Pérez
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THE training of human resources in the area of
healthcare and the development of essential services
to guarantee universal and quality medical
attention, should be seen as the most humane
expression of solidarity put into practice among the
countries comprising the Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas (ALBA).
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The Comprehensive
Healthcare Program is now underway in 44
countries with the presence of 4,313
cooperative workers. |
As a
proposal of integration, which emphasizes the
struggle against poverty and social exclusion, and
knowing it to be the heritage of the present and
future of our nations, it is sowing solidarity like
seeds, which are now germinating and making millions
of people in Latin America and the Caribbean happier
in their existence.
Cuba, which has been experiencing that new life
since January 1959, is putting into practice the
principle of sharing what one has with sister
nations in need. When ALBA was born in December
2004, Cuban doctors, nurses, and other healthcare
professionals had already sown hope in many nations
made more vulnerable on account of their depressed
or inexistent healthcare systems.
In
that way, the island's contribution to primary
healthcare services was not only felt via the Cuban
brigades, but also through the urgent and quality
training - here and in other countries - of medical
and technical personnel to help turn around a
deplorable prevailing situations.
Today the strategy designed by Commander in Chief
Fidel Castro to train doctors capable of
contributing to the transformation of healthcare in
sister nations with social commitment,
scientific-technical quality, and a feeling of
belonging to their nations is a reality.
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More than half a million
people in Latin America and the Caribbean have
had their eyesight restored thanks to
Operation Miracle. |
In
order to win in that battle, the Latin American
School of Medicine (ELAM) was created and
inaugurated by Fidel on November 15, 1999. To date,
7,256 students, more than 2,100 of them from ALBA
member states, have graduated from the school.
Currently, 21,359 students from 100 nations are
studying in Cuba, including 12,017 enrolled in the
New Latin American Doctor Training Program,
distributed throughout Cuba's universities and
medical science departments.
To a
similar end, no less than 40,000 students are to be
trained as doctors in Venezuela over the next few
years, and 26,956 young people are currently
enrolled in the first four years of the program. The
Bolivarian nation is also training 2,000 specialists
in General Comprehensive Medicine.
THE MIRACLE OF SIGHT
World Health Organization statistics detail the
existence of more than 37 million people globally
who are blind as a result of preventable diseases.
More than 1.5 million of them are children.
The
same source notes that to avoid more than 50% of
cases of blindness, 2,000 to 4,000 cataract
operations per one million people are needed.
Only
some of the highly developed countries have been
able to attain that rate. Poor accessibility to
medical services and the high cost of surgeries in
poor nations leave them far behind.
In
response, one of the most humane health programs on
the planet began on July 4, 2004, when Cuban
President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez agreed to develop a cooperative project to
attend to patients with visual disorders.
That
is how Operation Miracle was born. This project
alone has made it possible to restore the sight of
more than 500,000 people from the poorest sectors of
the population in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The
majority of these patients have been operated on in
61 opthamological centers, with 92 surgical
facilities donated by Cuba to more than 20
countries.
COMPREHENSIVE HEALTHCARE PROGRAM
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Healthcare centers,
equipped with state-of-the-art technology,
provide treatment free of charge in our
nations. |
When
powerful hurricanes affected several Central
American and Caribbean countries toward the end of
1998, Cuba responded immediately by sending doctors
and other health professionals to these countries.
The island also called on the developed countries to
provide technological equipment and medicine.
The
first brigade left for the Dominican Republic on
September 27 that year and medical collectives
traveled without delay to Honduras, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, and Haiti. By December 1998, 424
healthcare workers were providing healthcare
services in those nations.
On
November 21 of that same year, after Hurricane Mitch
lashed Central America, Fidel outlined the features
and implementation of a Comprehensive Healthcare
Program (PIS), the basis of which had been
introduced two months earlier in the support given
to Haiti.
To
bring this program to fruition, Cuba would provide
the human capital necessary by sending doctors and
nurses willing to provide their services anywhere,
even in the most isolated and remote places, to
everyone, without discrimination based on race,
creed or ideology, and without trying to replace
local doctors or interfere in internal affairs.
The
fundamental objective was not only to save human
lives but also to raise the quality of life of the
inhabitants of these socially marginalized areas.
The
Comprehensive Healthcare Program (PIS) is currently
being implemented in 44 nations with the help of
4,313 collaborators, 2,920 of them doctors.
All
of these components of human solidarity are
integrated into ALBA, which constitutes the seed and
fruit of what can be accomplished when our people
are united.
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