Buenos Aires, Oct 6, (RHC), – Cuban medical missions work all over the world under the premise that solidarity is not to give what is left over but to provide what others need, said in Buenos Aires Dr. Aleida Guevara March.
The daughter of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who visits Argentina to support the Operación Milagro (Operation Miracle) program that has restored sight to about 48,000 Argentines since 2005, highlighted in particular the departure of specialists to Africa to fight the deadly Ebola virus.
Cuban President Raul Castro Ruz, bid farewell on Wednesday night to 165 health professionals, who travelled to Sierra Leone to be part of the global fight against Ebola.
The contingent is made up 62 doctors and 103 nurses, all experienced in severe natural disasters and epidemics.
“It is what we are used to do,” replied the doctor when Prensa Latina asked her opinion on this new solidarity move.
‘It is our duty; we are Afro-Latin Americans, and we’ll take our solidarity to the children of that continent, for their contribution to our nation’, she added.
Aleida Guevara participated last night in the discussion ‘Health workers and international missions of Cuba’, organized by the Association of State Workers in its national headquarters in Buenos Aires.
She noted that since the 1960s, some 76, 745 health professionals have worked in 109 countries worldwide, 39 of these Africans. In these moments, there are 4,048 working in 32 countries on the continent, of which 2,269 are physicians.
But such assistance is provided equally in Latin America, where there are thousands of health workers, including doctors, technicians and nurses, in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Central America and most recently in Brazil.
Despite being a poor country that faces a blockade imposed by the United States for more than 50 years, Cuba has provided such assistance without neglecting medical care on the island, where today the infant mortality rate is four per 1,000 live births. She recalled that when the revolution triumphed in 1959, the rate was 60 per 1,000.
