HAVANA, May 24 (NNN-ACN) — Cuba commemorates 63 years of a milestone in the history of international medical cooperation: the arrival of the first brigade of health professionals in Algeria.
This unprecedented gesture of solidarity, in the words of the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, exalted the homeland “because everything that is done for others, everything that is done for other people, everything that is done for humanity, is what can give meaning to the life of a revolutionary and is the only thing that allows us to feel like members of the human family”.
The website of the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) Friday highlights the 62nd anniversary of Cuban medical collaboration, which has since reached 165 countries with more than 605,000 doctors and specialists.
Currently, more than 24,000 collaborators continue their work in 56 nations, facing challenges and offering care where health is an inaccessible luxury, Minsap points out.
It also stresses that their contribution has been key in the fight against epidemics, natural disasters and health crises, consolidating the essence of a model based on humanism, solidarity and internationalism.
One of the greatest achievements of Cuban medical cooperation has been “Operation Miracle”, through which more than 3,331,900 patients recovered their sight.
This initiative, created by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004, provided low-income people with free ophthalmologic treatments, thus vindicating the fundamental right to health.
In these more than 60 years of work, Cuban professionals have performed more than 17,342,150 surgical procedures and 5,606,400 deliveries.
According to the text, if it had not been for the timely intervention of Cuban professionals in different parts of the world, more than 12,127,000 people could have lost their lives.
Since its creation in 2005, the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors has also been on the front line against disasters and epidemics, and has been the protagonist of some of the greatest humanitarian epics in defense of life, according to the Minsap statement.
A total of 90 brigades have provided services in 55 countries, with more than 13,400 collaborators attending large-scale health crises.
Over the years, these physicians have assisted more than 8,45,800 people, performed 43,900 surgical procedures and saved more than 166,900 lives.
In the most difficult moments, the text points out, when health systems collapse and hope seems to vanish, the island’s doctors have been there, providing care in forgotten and hard-to-reach areas.
In spite of the strong pressures of the economic blockade and the attempts to discredit the revolutionary medical cooperation, the reality is that its impact is unquestionable, the article states.
It is not Cuba that speaks, it adds, but the people, the patients, the graduates and the beneficiaries, who bear witness to the difference these professionals have made in their lives.
In a world where health is often a privilege, the Caribbean nation defends it as a right; because when the life of a people is at risk, the duty of a doctor is never to question or doubt: it is to go, to save, to transform, the text refers.
It emphasizes that, 62 years later, his mission remains intact: to offer help where it is most needed, without asking for anything in return. In every country, in every community, in every emergency; the presence of Cuban medical cooperation is humanism, it is dedication, it is an example of solidarity, altruism and social commitment to the people.
This legacy belongs not only to Cuba, but to humanity and to a great homeland that has made solidarity its greatest strength, it concludes. — NNN-ACN
