Cuba to Increase Doctors Mission Abroad

Lourdes Pichs Rodriguez

The Cuban medical cooperation will be extended to more than 80 countries in coming months, when new brigades will provide health services in eight nations of the Pacific, Asia and Africa.

Dr. Alberto Gonzalez Polanco, director of the Central Unit of Medical Cooperation (UCCM), said in Holguín that the Cuban brigades will expand their collaboration to the countries of Vanuatu, Laos, Tuvalu, Nauro, Benin, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Actually 36,578 doctors are working in 73 nations as part of three key Projects called: The Special Mission, the Cooperated Technical Attention and the Comprehensive Health Programme (PIS).

Polanco acknowledged that more than 60 percent of health professionals from the island have provided solidarity aid to people of diverse cultures, religions and political systems and in very difficult conditions with differences in climate and customs, but in all cases they have received recognition from governments and patients about their dedication.

Holguin will be headquarters for the Regional Meeting of Medical Cooperation of the five eastern provinces and Camaguey, for the purpose of analyzing the current situation on that activity in this region.

The province of Holguin now has 2,631 doctors working in 39 countries, including Algeria, a nation to which Cuba sent its first doctors in 1963.