8-22-05,12:02pm

“This commencement ceremony is proof of the capacity of human beings to reach higher goals and a prize for those who believe that a better world is within our reach,” said Cuban President Fidel Castro at the first graduation ceremony of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana.

President Castro recalled that the idea of creating a medical school aimed at training health care professionals dedicated to serving in Third World nations arose soon after the massive deployment of Cuban doctors to Central America in the aftermath of hurricane Mitch in 1998.

He pointed out that if the former aim had been for Cuban doctors to supplement the services of physicians from hard hit Central American countries, today the school aims to graduate a whole new generation of doctors from such Third World nations; and not only from that one region, but from around the world.

When referring to the tremendous human capital created over the years by the Cuban Revolution in the sphere of the health care, Castro recalled that in the early 1960’s there were only 3,000 doctors in the country; as most of the physicians had abandoned the country for the United States and only a relatively small group of professors remained to begin to build what now exists today.

Over the past several decades, not only have tens of thousands of doctors been trained in Cuba, but the manner of preparing them has been radically different, he said. The president explained that prior to January 1959, the class sizes were massive and the practical experience minimal. He said it was possible to complete the medical program without ever having examined a patient. Education focused on treatment and the private practice of the profession; the word “prevention” was scarcely mentioned.

Contrasting the past to the current situation, the president pointed out that today’s enrollment of Cuban youths and those from other countries has increased considerably in diverse professions within the country’s efficient public health system. Presently the national health care program has a total of 78,759 students, including more than 12,000 medical students from 83 countries – with the largest numbers of foreign students coming from Venezuela, Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Guyana, Belize and St. Lucia.

When referring to the educational possibilities in Cuba, the head of state commented that today all hospitals have an educational focus, including the more than 400 polyclinics which are part of a national network of primary care. Each takes advantage of audiovisual resources and specialists which contribute to the on-going training of doctors. The results have proven far superior to past forms of instruction.

President Castro went on to mention the tremendous impetus in the training of physicians that has arisen out of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. As a result of this movement that promotes social and economic integration, Venezuela and Cuba expect to see 40,000 doctors graduate within the next ten years.

President Castro added that in Cuba another program is beginning at the same time which aims to train 20,000 Venezuelan physicians and an additional 30,000 doctors from Latin American and the Caribbean, with the large majority coming from low-income households.

Noting that the cost of training a doctor in the United States is at least $300,000 dollars, Cuba’s current enrollment of more than 12,000 medical students from the Third World should translate into the equivalent of US $3.6 billion in total services provided to their countries of origin, he estimated.

From this perspective, the combined program of the training of physicians being undertaken by Venezuela and Cuba could be viewed as a major contribution to the Third World. At the same time, Fidel noted that the US government spends $500 billion annually on war – to kill and exterminate.

“Those who manufacture biological and chemical weapons cannot earn the epithet of humanism; theirs is an inconceivable violation of the right to life and the most basic rights of human beings,” he said. Paraphrasing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he added “that system kills, because consumer societies are killing more people daily than those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”