The visit to Cuba of the President of Guinea Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, was brief but intense because of our solid friendship. The African leader reaffirmed the priority his country gives to the ties with the Caribbean nation, which he described as a sister.
By María Josefina Arce
The visit to Cuba of the President of Guinea Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, was brief but intense because of our solid friendship. The African leader reaffirmed the priority his country gives to the ties with the Caribbean nation, which he described as a sister.
The meeting with Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel was fraternal, during which the excellent state of bilateral ties and the interest to continue strengthening them was confirmed.
During the talks, Sissoco Embaló reaffirmed that his country will once again denounce at the next UN General Assembly the genocidal economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States sixty years ago against the Cuban people.
Already last March, during his trip to Havana, the president of the National People's Assembly of Guinea Bissau, Cipriano Cassama, had also condemned the unilateral measure and highlighted the historic ties existing between the two peoples, which date back to the time of the independence struggles of the African nation.
Since 1973, when Cuba and Guinea Bissau established diplomatic relations, they have developed a broad cooperation that has had its maximum expression in the areas of health and education.
Three years later, the first scientific-technical collaboration agreement between the two states was signed in Havana, which initiated cooperation actions in health.
In November 1986, with the support of Havana and 30 students, the "Miguel Díaz Argüelles" School of Medicine was inaugurated, giving way to teaching collaboration. Six years later, the first graduation of Guinean doctors took place in their own country.
At present, 34 Cuban health professionals are in that African nation, who besides contributing to improve health indexes, help in the training of new specialists.
These workers and their Guinean colleagues received the support of the Henry Reeve Brigade in the confrontation with COVID 19. In mid-2020, doctors, nurses, laboratory and electromedical technicians arrived in that territory.
It has been decades of unbreakable friendship, based on the fraternal and respectful relationship between the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, and the top leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, Amilcar Cabral.
The recent visit to Cuban territory of the President of Guinea Bissau reaffirmed the great brotherhood that exists and the will of both governments to continue working together for the welfare of their peoples.
