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.

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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.

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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

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