New York Times highlights Cuba’s efforts in combating cholera in Haiti

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"Half of the NGOs are already gone, and the Cubans are still there."

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In an article published November 8, The New York Times recognizes that, "as the epidemic continues, the Cuban medical mission that played an important role in detecting its presence in Haiti, winning accolades from donors and diplomats for staying on the front lines and undertaking a broader effort to remake this country's shattered health care system."
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"Paul Farmer, the United Nations deputy special envoy to Haiti and a founder of Partners in Health, said the Cubans sounded an important early alarm about the outbreak, helping to mobilize health officials and lessen the death toll," the newspaper writes.

Cuban medical personnel were in Haiti when the earthquake happened and are still there, while half of the NGO’s have already left. (Photo: Juan Diego Nusa Peñalver) 

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Even more, while the death rate peaked last December and the world's attention has largely moved on, Farmer noted, "Half of the NGOs are already gone, and the Cubans are still there."
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To date this year in Haiti, 6,600 people have died of cholera and more than 476,000 contracted the disease – close to 5% of the country’s 10 million inhabitants – considered by UN officials as the highest cholera rate in the world.
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Cuban medical personnel have been working in Haiti since 1998, when 100 doctors arrived there in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. They are part of the internationalist medical missions that Cuba has maintained for 50 years. 

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 

Also See 

Revolutionary Doctors
How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s
Conception of Health Care

CLICK HERE for freeexcerpt link

 

 

CLICK HERE to order the book today

Cuba Criticizes Breach of Commitments to Haiti

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Cuba criticized the failure to meet the commitments for the reconstruction of Haiti and reiterated its willingness to work with any country or organization for the development of the Haitian Health System.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, noted that the amounts of financial and material aid promised have not been delivered, just as the will of the Haitian government has been disrespected, and their priorities unattended.

Haitis reconstruction, with which we are all committed, is a work in progress, said Bruno Rodriguez, speaking at a special meeting of the Security Council devoted to that topic.

The minister recalled that a year ago, more than 150 governments and other international organizations promised nine billion USD for that purpose, of which 5 billion would be paid out in the first two years.

But what happened since then has not been consistent with the spirit that prevailed at that conference, and many of the self-proclaimed major donors continue to devote exorbitant resources to war and military intervention, said Bruno.

• Read full article 

• Read  Bruno Rodríguez’s full speech

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Visit the Haiti Action Committee website

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Cuban volunteers return from Haiti

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Cuban Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda
 presents Dr. Lázaro Gustavo Roque with a
special certificate of recognition for the
Brigade’s campaign against the cholera epidemic.

After four months of commendable work alleviating cholera in Haiti, 130 Cubans from the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Disaster Situations & Serious Epidemics have returned home, proud of having lowered the death rate from the dangerous disease to 0.38%.

On welcoming the 52 physicians who arrived at José Martí International Airport, Public Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda commended the professionalism of these doctors and presented them with certificates of recognition for their unconditional aid to the Caribbean nation.

The other members of the Brigade had already been honored in Santiago de Cuba, where Lázaro Expósito, first secretary of the Communist Party in the province, placed similar certificates in their hands.

Dr. Lázaro Gustavo Roque, highlighted the sound intention of Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro when he perceived that mobilizing the Medical Brigade’s human resources and graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) would make it possible to mitigate the epidemic.

He also emphasized the contribution of the Proactive Monitoring Groups in Haiti’s sub-communes, where they identified and treated more than 5,000 cholera patients.

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.

Source

Also See
> Cuban Doctors Lead the Fight Against Cholera in Haiti
> Cuba meets its commitments and Haiti responds
> New Henry Reeve Brigade arrives in Haiti

Cuban Doctors Lead the Fight Against Cholera in Haiti

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With a tradition of service in the world’s poorest and most forgotten states, the Cubans are a major frontline force in the multinational response to the raging epidemic




They don’t send out press releases, don’t have public information officers and their contacts are not widely publicized by the huge international humanitarian operation helping cholera-hit Haiti.

But when the United Nations appeals for more doctors and nurses to combat the deadly disease that is killing dozens by the day, it is to Cuba’s medical brigade that U.N. officials are likely to turn to first.

With a tradition of service in the world’s poorest and most forgotten states, the Cubans are a major frontline force in the multinational response to the raging epidemic, which has killed at least 2,000 people and probably more, since mid-October in the impoverished country.

While many Western aid workers crowd Haiti’s capital, where more than 1.3 million vulnerable homeless survivors of the January 12 earthquake are crammed into tent camps, Cuba’s medics are seeking out cholera victims in hard-to-reach rural hamlets.

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While many Western aid workers crowd Haiti’s capital,
 Cuba’s medics are seeking out cholera victims in hard-to-reach rural hamlets.

A Cuban-led team trekked this week to one such settlement — the dirt-poor mountain village of Plateau in Haiti’s cholera-ravaged Artibonite department, where they set up an emergency makeshift cholera treatment centre on the benches of a Protestant church.

“We don’t look for publicity but we do look for the people,” Dr. Lorenzo Somarriba, coordinator of the Cuban Medical Brigade in Haiti, told Reuters at the brigade’s headquarters in a Port-au-Prince suburb.

“The Cuban doctors are working in the most difficult places. It’s our policy to concentrate on areas outside the national capital,” he said, a fact acknowledged by both Haitian and foreign health authorities.

Read the rest . . .

Also see
> How shameful, NATO talking about cannons in Lisbon while thousands are dying in Haiti

and

> Minustah and the Epidemic

> Duty and the epidemic in Haiti

> News on cholera in Haiti

Source

Hurricane Tomas Leaves No Casualties in Cuba

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Hurricane Tomas has caused neither fatal victims nor considerable property damage so far in Cuba after crossing close to the eastern tip of the island on Friday night, Civil Defense authorities reported.

Chief of the National Civil Defense Council (DC), Major General Ramon Pardo Guerra made the announcement and extolled the effort made by the people and local governments to minimize the impact of Tomas in the eastern provinces.

The center of the category-1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale (of five) crossed the Windward Passage strait at around 6:00 p.m. Friday when its center was located around 46,60 miles east off Punta de Maisi and had with sustained winds of 74,56 mph. Tomas continued to move northwest at a speed of 13 mph.

Heavy rains were reported in the Cuban easternmost province of Guantanamo and also in the municipalities of Moa, Frank Pais, Sagua de Tanamo, Mayari, Antilla and Gibara, in Holguin; coastal flooding and a dozen collapsed houses have been also reported in those areas.

Coastal flooding in municipalities north of Havana are possible.

Upon passing by Haiti on Friday, Hurricane Tomas left five people dead, two missing and six injured, according to preliminary reports from Port-au-Prince.

Tomas is forecasted to continue strengthening in the next 12 hours before beginning to weaken in the next 24 hours. The hurricane will move in a direction close to the northeast near the eastern tip of Cuba, gradually increasing its speed.

Also see
> Cuban Civil Defense Program Among Best of the Caribbean
> Weaker storm still brings Haiti misery
> Sweatshops Over Homes in Haiti

Source

Top Censored Stories of 2010

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Cuba Makes the top Twenty Five Again  

Coverage of the Haiti earthquake sees Cuba making this year’s list, in Project Censored’s “Top Censored Stories of 2009-2010″ Coming in at 12th place.

Cuba was the first to come into Haiti with medical aid when the January 12, 2010, earthquake struck. Among the many donor nations, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating Haiti’s earthquake victims. Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris and to revamp hospitals immediately after the earthquake struck. Their pivotal work in the health sector has, however, received scant media coverage.

The the whole story
Cuba Provided the Greatest Medical Aid to Haiti after the Earthquake

Media Democracy in Action

This year’s edition of “Censored 2011: The Top Censored Stories of 2009-2010″ covers the most under-reported stories the corporate media ignore, but also this year’s Censored Deja Vu, Junk Food News and News Abuse, Signs of Health, and FAIR’s 10th anniversary of Fear and Favor in the News Room.

You can check out the top 25 here