Cuban Physicians Have Saved More than 280,000 Guatemalan Lives Since 1998
News from Cuba | Saturday, 23 November 2013
Members of Cuban Medical Teams working in Guatemala since 1998 have saved the lives of at least 286,141 Guatemalan patients until October 2013, according to official figures released in that Central American nation.
Statistics show that the successive Cuban Medical Brigades in Guatemala have attended in this period 35,431,805, according to the Presna Latina news agency.
Surgical operations were performed by Cuban doctors on 273,606 patients, including general surgery, gynecology, obstetrics and orthopedics.
Meanwhile the free-eye surgery program known as Operation Milagro led to surgical interventions in 122,658 patients, all of whom recovered their vision. The latter began in 2004 as a humanitarian project cosponsored by Venezuela and Cuba to help deprived Latin American residents to regain vision impaired by disease, trauma or other causes.
Over the past years over three million Latin American citizens have been benefited by eye operations in nine nations in the area as a result of Operation Miracle.
Both, President Otto Pérez and Foreign Minister Fernando Carrera have publicly praised the work done by Cuban doctors and technicians in the Health field
Cuban doctors arrived in Guatemala in November 1998 to help the population recover from the devastating hurricane Mitch.
