Cuba has 25,000 doctors on missions abroad
Campaign News | Monday, 13 March 2006
Valuable human capital for serving the world, says Fidel
Havana March 11: CUBA possesses valuable human capital available for serving the world; that is our greatest wealth, and we have nothing to exhibit other than that fortune and our willingness and desire to cooperate with the neediest people, affirmed President Fidel Castro Ruz in closing remarks at the 9th International Seminar on Primary Healthcare.
Cuba has more than 70,000 doctors, including 60,000 specialists and about 25,000 who are on internationalist missions.
The Cuban president commented on some of the realities of today’s world with the 1,000-plus delegates who attended the event.
“Humanity is irresponsibly heading toward a dead end, and many of you, thanks to your experiences in internationalist missions, have been able to confirm that,” he said. “You have witnessed the dire poverty, calamities, inequalities and exclusion suffered by many nations throughout the Earth.”
Fidel noted that in face of these realities, the Cuban people are waging a Battle of Ideas, entrenching themselves in intelligence, knowledge, humane ideas and solidarity, and are engaged in an energy revolution.
He also highlighted the double standards applied by the White House and its lackeys in the Human Rights Commission. There, it makes accusations against other countries but fails to say a single word regarding its own irregularities in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, or the torture and abuse committed by its soldiers in its prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, the naval base it illegally maintains in Guantánamo, and the secret detention centers in “sophisticated” Europe.
The U.S. government is more demoralized every day, and will increasingly encounter greater resistance because people know very well what the realities in that country are, where 43 million people (20% of its population) lack healthcare, and poverty and exclusion are on the rise.
He mentioned the medical cooperation provided by our country’s health professionals in Latin America, Africa and Asia for preventive care, healing and saving lives under any circumstance. He also referred to the educational work being carried out by our internationalists, who are training thousands of young people both here in Cuba and in some of those countries.
“We train them with the most modern educational technology, with the ethics necessary for them to have as the precept of their future duty to human beings, and for them to have as their essential purpose the spreading of health,” Fidel emphasized.
During the event’s final session, participants included José Ramón Machado Ventura, José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, Pedro Ross Leal and Concepción Campa, all members of the Political Bureau, as well as representatives of international organizations in the health field.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/marzo/lun13/12salud.html
