Cuba Solidarity Aotearoa : Cuban Medical System

Showing posts with label Cuban Medical System. Show all posts

"Wow, if we were in Cuba and had all this equipment . . . "

Olga Salanueva, wife of Cuban five anti-terrorist René González, describes her years as immigrant worker in US

"This was in Jackson Memorial Hospital. It’s the only public hospital in Miami-Dade County, but it has many resources and is very well equipped. I thought: Wow, if we were in Cuba and had all this equipment, the things we could do, with our doctors and the training they have! And that includes the way doctors, nurses, and other health care workers are trained to care for you as a human being. That’s why the U.S. government doesn’t want Cuba to advance, that’s why they’ve blockaded us."

In an interview, conducted Feb. 27, 2012, in Havana, Olga Salanueva recounted some of her experiences as an immigrant worker in the United States, where she lived and worked for four years before being deported back to her native Cuba. Her story is one that millions of workers in the United States, immigrant and native-born, will identify with.

Salanueva’s husband, René González, is one of five Cuban revolutionaries framed up by the U.S. government and fighting for their freedom. Incarcerated for more than 13 years, González was transferred in October 2011 from federal prison to “supervised release.” He is ordered to remain in the United States under the control of the federal courts’ probation office until October 2014.

Read the interview

Australian aid boost to help Cuban health aid initiative in Timor-Leste


Dr Dan Murphy of the Bairo Pite clinic in Dili

Australian contributions may become the latest asset for an already thriving Cuban health aid programme in Timor-Leste and this is likely to start later this year.

The Australian government has announced this year a $9 billion increase to foreign aid spending over the next four years with a significant focus on Timor-Leste.

The announcement comes in conjunction with the first independent review into the effectiveness of Australian foreign aid in 15 years.

The review panel has recommended a four-year strategy, where projects are frequently reviewed, and is currently working with the Australian government to set goals for the increased funding.

The panel drew particular attention to the need for value for money and maximum impact for the resources deployed. Building and making better use of effective international partnerships was also recommended.

The Cuban Medical Programme in Timor-Leste, established in 2003 by the previous Fretilin-led government, has saved an estimated more than 17,000 lives, remaining one of the most successful in the world.

Timor-Leste President Jose-Ramos Horta is a strong supporter of the Cuban aid programme, last month recommending the Cuban aid team for a Nobel Peace prize.

Favourable outcomes

University of Sydney lecturer Dr Tim Anderson has closely followed and studied the Cuban programme and says a tripartite agreement involving the government of Timor-Leste would be an effective use of Australian aid funds and produce favourable outcomes for the Timor-Leste Health Care System.

A linked Cuban/Australian programme was discussed by Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Richard Marles during his visit to Cuba last week.

Read the rest

Source: Pacific Scoop Report
– By Laura Stewart

The Doctors of Tomorrow - excerpt

The Pacific School of Medicine, part 1

The Pacific School of Medicine, part 2

Hope for Haiti: Trained in Cuba, Bronx doctor drops everything to help

Hope for Haiti: Trained in Cuba, Bronx doctor Melissa Barber drops everything to help earthquake victims

After the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Haiti, Dr. Melissa Barber received a call asking her to help treat people left injured and living in squalid conditions.

“There was no question,” said Barber, 30, who was born and raised in the Bronx and worked in quality assessment at St. Barnabas Hospital in the heart of the borough. “I actually resigned and I made plans to go to Haiti for a month. That is how much it’s ingrained in me to help the underserved communities when they are in need.”

Barber’s sense of service stems from her training at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana. Like thousands of fellow graduates from poor and indigenous communities in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, she received a full scholarship to attend the school in exchange for a commitment to work in areas that lack adequate access to healthcare. Haiti no doubt fit that definition before the earthquake, and even more so afterward.

So Barber joined six other Cuban-trained doctors from the United States — all of them women — who packed their bags full of donated medical supplies and arrived Jan. 26 in the Dominican Republic, beginning a commitment that could last for years.

Read the full account here

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Cuba Registers Anti-tumor Therapeutic Vaccine for Lung Cancer

Vaccine assits “control the growth of
a tumour without associated toxication”

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A therapeutic vaccine against acute lung cancer developed in Cuba has been registered in Peru, reported the Spanish news agency EFE.

The vaccine, named CIMAVAX-EGF, is the “world’s first lung cancer vaccine,” according to Gisela González, medical researcher from the Immunologic Molecular Center (CIM) in Havana.

Gonzáles said it has been successfully applied in more than a thousand patients in Cuba.

The vaccine is currently registered in Peru and in process of being registered in Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Argentina, said González.

The specialist said the product will soon undergo a probation phase in China.

CIMAVAX-EGF is a result of 15 years of research in Cuba where it was registered in June 2008.

“It has been confirmed that it is a secure vaccine without severe secondary effects and it prolongs a patient’s life with quality standards,” said González to Trabajadores, an official Cuban weekly that published a feature about the vaccine, said EFE.

“The vaccine is based in a protein we all have: the factor of epidermis growth, related to the process of cellular proliferation that goes out of control when cancer is diagnosed,” she explained according to EFE.

González said that the human body tolerates what is “inherent” to its system and reacts against what is “alien” to it. Therefore they had to develop “a composition that generated antibodies against this protein.”

This vaccine is applied after a cancer patient has either gone through chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatment as is considered “terminal without a therapeutic alternative,” she said.

Under this condition, the vaccines helps to “control the growth of a tumor without associated toxication,” added the Cuban specialist.

González said that after its success in Cuba, CIMAVAX-EGF is making progress in other countries and it is being evaluated to be used in therapies against tumor in prostate, uterus and breast cancer.

Source

Cuban Doctors Save 250,000 people in Haiti

Cuban doctors have saved over 250000 Haitians during the twelve years of medical cooperation in Haiti, which was devastated in 2010 by a strong earthquake and after that by the cholera pandemic.

Cuban Health vice Minister Marcias Cobas said that international cooperation with Haiti began in December 1998; it was never suspended despite coups d’état, and was intensified this year after the earthquake and the pandemic outbreak.

Acording to the Cuban Round Table TV Program, Cobas affirmed that Haiti has received, during these years, more than 3500 health cooperants that have performed 16 million consultations.

Cobas added that the health system of Haiti was rebuilt, as part of a Cuban initiative after the earthquake, with the support of nations from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), especially from Venezuela.

She mentioned that under this initiative, in progress when the cholera pandemic started, they have created more than 24 campaign hospitals and 30 rehabilitation centers.

Cobas noted that nowadays, there are more than 1334 Cuban health cooperants and that not even the pandemic has been able to stop the rebuilding process.

Reflections of Fidel

The battle against cholera

Cholera was detected last October 20 in a health facility with Cuban doctors and it spread right away throughout the country causing death to 2707 people. Other 115 cases were reported in the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s closest neighbor, in addition to other three in the United States.

Cuban Health deputy Minister Luis Struch pointed out that after the earthquake Cuba began to monitor the epidemiologic situation of Haiti, which allowed noticing immediately this acute bacteriologic disease of high toxicity.

Struch said that the Cuban strategy against the pandemic in Haiti is to take the health services to every corner of the country.

The Rector of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) highlighted the presence of tens of young physicians graduated in this school in the cooperation mission in Haiti.

Cuban vice Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Ramon Ripoll noted that the solidarity of other governments with Haiti is channelled through the Cuban medical mission.

He cited the support of Norway, Spain, Australia and Namibia and stated that the distribution and use of the materials are made in conjunction with the Haitian authorities.