Chávez receives advance brigade of Cuban doctors

CARACAS, October 8.— Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez today received the new advance brigade of Cuban doctors, who arrived in the country to boost the Barrio Adentro Mission healthcare program that is being implemented by the Bolivarian government.

Telesur reported that the incorporation of these new Cuban doctors will advance work in the 7,000 primary healthcare centers throughout Venezuela, given that approximately 2,000 of these had no permanent doctor, as the Venezuelan president stated in September.

On the other hand, Prensa Latina cited Chávez as having affirmed that 24,811 Venezuelans are studying community medicine in 318 of the country’s 335 municipalities.

This figure is in excess of the 22,059 students matriculated in seven-year programs at university medical schools in the nation, he stated during an event marking the Day of the Community Doctor.

Meanwhile, Rogelio Polanco, the Cuban ambassador in Venezuela, said that the fact that Venezuela is training its physicians in the community will promote doctors with a commitment to their people. He described the experiment, in which the Cuban doctors are collaborating as instructors, as unprecedented in the history of humanity

A tribute commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the death of Ernesto Che Guevara took place in Caracas’ Teresa Carreño Theater.

With the aim of consolidating the revitalization of the social programs in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Cuban and Venezuelan authorities bade farewell yesterday morning to the 240 members of the Ernesto Che Guevara brigade, who commemorated the 42nd anniversary of the death of the heroic guerrilla by multiplying his example as an internationalist doctor.

"The future of the Revolution is going there," affirmed Health Minister José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, referring to the family doctors, dentists, and specialists in General Integral Medicine with diplomas in Intensive Therapy, who have left their native land to give the best of themselves to the former dispossessed of the continent. "Fidel and Raúl have every confidence in you," he said.

Speaking to Granma on behalf of his country, Ronald Blanco La Cruz, Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba, expressed his eternal gratitude to the Cuban people and government for their solidarity. "These doctors are going to strengthen cooperation within the framework of ALBA, a mechanism that is integrating our nations in a novel and beneficial way with more health services, not military bases."

Roberto Morales, Cuban deputy minister of health, stressed how the services offered by the Barrio Adentro Mission have raised the quality of life of the Venezuelan people, an irrefutable reality that cannot be attacked by the opposition right-wing media. (Anneris Ivette Leyva)