Cuban medical aid to Central America (fwd)

[Frances Bolton (PHI)]

Title: 981214-59--Cuba Launches Int'l Solidarity Campaign
Revolutionary gov't proposes 2,000 doctors for Central America, thousands
volunteer
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from the Militant, vol.62/no.45                     December 15, 1998


BY MARTI'N KOPPEL
  Thousands of Cubans have volunteered to serve as doctors and
health-care workers in hurricane-ravaged Central America and
Haiti in response to a call for international solidarity by the
Cuban government.
  In a November 21 speech, Cuban president Fidel Castro
announced the revolutionary government is offering to send
2,000 doctors to Central America to help establish an "integral
health program" that can save many more lives than the
estimated 30,000 that were lost as a result of Hurricane Mitch,
which wreaked destruction throughout the region in October and
early November.
  Castro called on the wealthier governments of the world to
finance this health plan and appealed for volunteers from other
Latin American nations and elsewhere to join the Cuban doctors.
He also reported that Cuba is offering thousands of medical
scholarships for students from Central America and Haiti.
  After Hurricane Georges devastated the Caribbean, Cuba sent a
13-member medical volunteer brigade to the Dominican Republic
that treated thousands of patients in some of the worst-hit
areas. A contingent of about 200 Cuban doctors is being readied
for Haiti before the end of the year. Following Hurricane
Mitch, Cuban volunteer brigades went to Guatemala and Honduras.
Some 200 Cuban doctors are working in Honduras today.
  In a joint statement published in the Cuban daily Granma
November 24, the Union of Young Communists (UJC) and Federation
of University Students (FEU) of Cuba issued a call for "young
health-care workers and students to join the medical brigades"
in Central America. The youth organizations added, "Our
universities are also ready to welcome youth from those
countries to study in our classrooms, including a significant

number from indigenous communities."
  
  Cuban youth: `this is our opportunity'
  The UJC and FEU declared, "This is our opportunity to be
internationalists, an opportunity our generation has dreamed
about, one that will leave an indelible mark on our
experiences."
  Three days later, tens of thousands of students marched
through the streets of Havana and other cities around the
island for the annual celebration honoring a group of eight
Cuban medical students who were executed in Havana in 1871 by
Spanish colonial authorities for fighting for Cuba's
independence. Ce'sar Herna'ndez Gonza'lez, FEU president at the
Havana School of Medicine, read a letter at the site of the
rally in Havana on behalf of medical students to Cuban
president Castro expressing their willingness to volunteer in
Central America. The Cuban press announced that 14,800 Cuban
medical students, out of a total of 21,000, have already
volunteered to go to Central America or Haiti if called.
  Meanwhile, the National Union of Health-Care Workers (SNTS)
of Cuba is holding local union meetings in hospitals and
clinics throughout the island to determine how many of its
members are willing to join the Central American brigades.
Union leaders noted that some 25,000 Cuban health-care workers
and professionals have carried out internationalist missions
around the world over the years. The medical volunteers who
recently returned from the Dominican Republic were given
special awards by the Central Organization of Cuban Workers
(CTC), the trade union federation.
  
  Cuban volunteers arrive in Nicaragua
  A few days earlier, the government of Nicaragua reversed its
previous refusal to accept Cuba's offer of volunteer doctors, a
stance that had sparked widespread outrage among Nicaraguans.
Within two days, a group of Cuban volunteers arrived in
Nicaragua, headed by Deputy Health Minister Abelardo Rami'rez.
The next day, six three-person medical brigades were busy at
work in some of the remotest areas of Nicaragua.
  In the November 26 Granma, reporter Orlando Oramas Leo'n
gives a vivid account of one day in the work of a Cuban team in
the cattle-raising community of La Curva,
in Nicaragua's western province of Chinandega. Family doctor
Rodolfo Alvarez gets up at dawn to milk the cows together with
other villagers and takes part in other agricultural chores. He
travels around the area on horseback to see his patients. By
dusk, Dr. Rafael Garci'a, the epidemiologist, is still not back
from a trip he began early that morning through the area, where
at least one person has already died of leptospirosis since the
hurricane.
  In the first two days the brigadistas have treated 300
patients. "The word is getting out that we're here and patients
come from far away who want to be treated by us," says nurse
Mi'riam Este'fano. Mari'a del Carmen Romero walked more than
four miles to get treatment for her daughter, who has a high
fever. Romero knows the Cubans well. It was Cuban volunteer
teachers who taught her to read and write a decade ago.
  Some medical students from Managua, Nicaragua's capital, have
joined with the Cuban volunteers. The Nicaraguan students
expressed delight at Cuba's offer of scholarships to train
Central American doctors.
  The National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) of
Nicaragua has demanded that the Nicaraguan government request a
second Cuban medical contingent for an isolated rural area near
the Honduran border that remains particularly devastated.
  Mitch left a toll of more than 10,000 dead, 20,000 missing,
and millions without a home or livelihood. Outbreaks of
epidemics have already been reported throughout Central
America, including several hundred cases of cholera, dengue,
malaria, acute respiratory diseases, diarrhea, and
leptospirosis, caused by a water-borne parasite.
  
  Castro outlines int'l campaign
  In his November 21 speech to a conference of the National
Forum on Science and Technology in Havana, Castro outlined a
series of proposals and initiatives that are part of Cuba's
international solidarity campaign:
  Cuba will provide at least 2,000 doctors for Central America,
plus 200 for Haiti, as part of long-term integral public health
plans for the two regions. The goal is to reduce infant
mortality in Haiti from 135 to 35 deaths per 1,000 live births,
and in Central America - where it ranges between 47 and
63 - down to 20 deaths per 1,000 live births. Castro estimated
that this effort could save the lives every year of more than
20,000 children in Haiti and 25,000 children in Central
America.
  Cuba is appealing to Latin American, European, and other
governments to send volunteer doctors as well.
  This health plan would cost $200 million in medicines and
supplies, which Cuba proposed be financed by wealthier
countries in the world. This amount could easily be funded out
of the U.S. military budget of $260 billion, Castro pointed
out. Cuba has already donated vaccines and several tons of a
rat poison, Biorrat, created in Cuban laboratories. Rats are a
major carrier of disease in the flood-ravaged areas.
  Madrid  has been the first to respond favorably to the Cuban
proposal, offering $31 million in interest-free loans payable
within 30 years, Granma reported.
  Havana, which canceled Nicaragua's $50 million debt to Cuba,
has called on the other governments to cancel Central America's
debt to them. Honduras, whose banana crop was wiped out, has
suffered more than $3 billion in losses and Nicaragua $1.6
billion. The two countries are burdened with foreign debts of
$4.3 billion and $6.5 billion, respectively.
  Cuba is supporting the request by the governments in the
region that Washington suspend deportations of undocumented
immigrants to Central America.
  Cuba is offering medical scholarships to medical students
from Central America for the next 10 years: 1,000 next year and
500 each subsequent year. On a suggestion by the Guatemalan
foreign minister, Castro said, 50 percent of the scholarships
will be reserved for students from Indian communities. The
medical students will be trained with an eye to "serving the
most isolated, the most difficult areas," Castro said.
 
  `People of United States must know'
  This international solidarity campaign, Castro noted, has
been largely blacked out in the U.S. media. "It must be made
known to the people of the United States. It's important," he
emphasized. Cuba, he said, is campaigning not only through
words but through deeds, internationalist actions that are not
new but "an honorable tradition" of the revolution.
  Washington "isn't sending doctors, it's sending soldiers" to
Central America, mainly to rebuild some roads and bridges, the
Cuban leader said. "It would be good for the people of the
United States to know how much can be done with few resources,
in other fields that are essential for the well-being of the
people of Central America."
  Castro stated, "We cannot conceive of the notion that, in
face of tragedies such as these, we would limit ourselves to
some first aid, to a little bit of reconstruction aid and
nothing else, simply to turn the page and move on." A farther-
reaching approach is needed to address the social problems
faced by millions in the region.
  Cuba's call for international solidarity, he said, is
"important not only for Central America but for the rest of the
world. This is what must be raised around the world, in this
globalized world, which has so much technology, so much waste,
so much inequality in the distribution of wealth."
  In face of capitalism's globalization, Castro concluded,
"What we must create is human globalization."