Anniversary of the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba.

Havana, Nov 15 (RHC) The Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba (ELAM) celebrates its 23rd anniversary today, founded by the leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, who is considered a promoter of human resources training in this sensitive sector.

Professor emeritus and consultant of that University, Luis Estruch recently said that the school is proof of humanism, internationalism, and altruism as designed by the Commander in Chief.

Fidel's concept was that without the training of human resources it is impossible to guarantee health services, for which it is necessary to have doctors, nurses, and paramedical personnel, and that is a problem to be solved in poor nations and many with remarkable development, Estruch explained.

What the Latin American School of Medicine modestly does is instruct young people, and this means that they return to their homeland with a college degree.

They can work in communities in primary health care and help their people a lot, said the specialist with 52 years of experience in the sector.

He recalled the presence of Fidel Castro in the U.S. city of New York in 2000 when he attended a session of the United Nations General Assembly.

He was invited by the black and religious community to a meeting at the Riverside Church, where there were more than five thousand participants, and he offered 500 scholarships for local young people to come and study at the Latin American School of Medicine.

That task was given to me by the Commander in Chief, and nobody wanted to believe that young people from the first economic power would travel to Cuba to train as doctors, that was a long political and ideological battle, he pointed out.

More than 500 young people from the United States came to Cuba, and more than 250 opted for the specialty of Medicine and graduated, and most of them have already gone through very rigorous academic procedures to receive validation and practice in the United States, the doctor pointed out.

This battle had Fidel Castro and Reverend Lucius Walker (1930-2010) as protagonists, and I believe we did not achieve the massiveness that the "Comandante" wanted, but many of them -and I have had the opportunity to see them in Harlem and the Bronx- are already working in hospitals and communities.

That was Fidel's idea, and it is not that we are going to solve the problem of that nation, but it was a small quota of hope for the poor that in their communities they can be attended by young people who graduated in Cuba.

The ELAM has a history of 18 graduations in which 30 thousand 636 students from 120 countries graduated. (Source: PL)