Cuba Creates International Disaster and Epidemic Brigade
 Prensa Latina
| | Cuba to further improve health statistics, Fidel Castro says. |
Havana - The world now can count on a medical brigade willing to provide services anywhere there is an epidemic or catastrophe.
The Henry Reeve International Contingent of Disaster and Epidemic Physicians, a team of 1,586 physicians, was officially inducted by President Fidel Castro at the graduation ceremony for 1,903 new doctors from the island´s medical schools.
The genesis of this undertaking occurred on Sep 4, with the initial goal of offering humanitarian aid to the United States for victims of hurricane Katrina.
“We form professionals to fight death,” said the Cuban President, and the qualifications are certainly stringent, including knowledge of epidemiology and disease, two languages, physical fitness and willingness to relocate wherever necessary.
“If wealthy nations ever decide to collaborate in the combat against the pandemics of poor countries, they’ll need professionals like those in the Henry Reeve brigade,” declared Fidel Castro, citing Cuba’s first world infant mortality and life expectancy stats as evidence of the island´s medical success.
“We are not bragging, simply explaining, in all fairness, how Cuba is the country that has done most to share with the world its medical experience and knowledge,” he said.
“We have never forsaken any nation that really needed our help in the case of a catastrophe, regardless of ideological or political differences,” he stressed. |
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News from Around the Americas | September 2005 
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