Cuban Health Minister presents the strengths of his country's health system in Vietnam

Hanoi, Sep 29 (RHC) Jose Angel Portal Miranda, Cuban Health Minister gave a detailed dissertation in Hanoi on the strengths and cooperation opportunities of the Cuban health system.

Cuba has a broad health care network that ensures and provides universal and free access to its entire population, even when the country is facing a tight economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed six decades ago by successive U.S. governments, he said.

Portal Miranda recalled that at the triumph of the Revolution, in 1959, there were only six thousand doctors on the island, half of whom emigrated, and pointed out that today the country has 102 thousand doctors. The country also trains dentists, nurses, and technicians who guarantee the full functioning of the health system.

He also pointed out that today more than 26,000 Cuban collaborators in the sector work in 59 countries, and that during the most critical time of the Covid-19 pandemic, 58 medical brigades left the island to help 42 countries.

The Cuban Health Minister also remarked that his country developed five vaccine candidates against Covid-19, three of them are now vaccines, and detailed that more than 98 percent of the population is already fully vaccinated and more than 85 percent have booster doses.

He said Cuba was the first country in the world to immunize children over two years of age against this disease and has so far administered more than 42 million doses of the immunogen to its population of some 11 million inhabitants.

Furthermore, Portal Miranda referred to the potential of the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos (CSMC), both in the health care area and in the academic and teaching fields, whose income is fully invested in the development of the national health system.

All the work of the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos is based on professionalism, ethics, humanism, and the commitment of the healthcare workers to life, he assured.

The meeting with the Cuban minister was attended by officials from the national health portfolio, businessmen, specialists, and Vietnamese doctors trained in Cuba, as well as Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos´s representative, Roberto Baños. (Source: Prensa Latina).