2-17-05, 8:02 am
From Granma International
It could well be that within our Revolution it is Medicine, the Medical Sciences, the health of our people and sister and friendly nations that have the highest profile and future, affirmed President Fidel Castro, at the end of the 9th Congress of the National Health Workers Trade Union. The meeting took place over two days at the International Conference Center in the capital.
“Of course, I belong to the Health Workers Trade Union,” he said with a smile at the beginning of his keynote address in which he outlined the Revolution’s new development programs, the objective of which is to offer health services of the highest quality and excellence.
“We are undertaking a program that I believe has no precedent,” stated Fidel. “It could be said,” he noted, “that in the last few years we have invested around $150 million in quality medical equipment – the best – for primary care and hospitals.”
Referring to the new concepts being introduced in the sector, he drew attention to the cancer nurses who are to be lending their services in the “frontline” clinical-surgical hospitals throughout the country. He explained that by “frontline” he meant that they would provide access to the most advanced treatment: a cobalt pump, the latest-generation lineal accelerator and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
Diagnostic centers are also be to opened for heart disorders in each of the provinces, bearing in mind that heart disease and cancer constitute the prime causes of death in Cuba, and simultaneously, ophthalmology departments similar to that of the Pando Ferrer in City of Havana. The frontline surgical clinics will have a 64-Resolution Numeric Tomografia, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and tri-dimensional Ultrasound, in order to make non-invasive diagnoses.
The Orthopedics sector will offer services ranging from hip transplants to artificial knee implants.
The Cuban leader emphasized that, without any doubt, our country is set to become a medical service center matchless in the world.
He observed that this organization of health care will have the cooperation of the research complex in West Havana, and the Latin American School of Medicine, and will cover the integral health programs and those of the medical services in Venezuela, including others that could be established in the future.
Fidel went on to note that the hospital network will offer excellent services to hundreds of thousands of persons from abroad, as well as to the 11 million inhabitants of the island who need them, clarifying that he was referring to the treatment of cancer, heart disease and ophthalmology.
He stressed the need to redouble efforts in training personnel to the highest level and, “as we go about training them, to also improve their living conditions, income by including material or moral incentives in the program.
Fidel spoke of Cuba’s historical links with President Chávez of Venezuela, who he described as the leader of that glorious and promising Bolivarian Revolution, and the recent signing of a Cuba-Venezuela cooperation agreement in parallel with a statement of principles on the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), as opposed to the annexationist Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). He stressed that that agreement is the most advanced in Latin America in terms of genuine integration, and gave figures revealing the growing trade between the two nations.
He also highlighted advances in the health field underway in Venezuela, where imperialism and those acting in its service had abandoned to fate the health of 17 million poor people. At the same time, Fidel referred to the training of Venezuelan doctors, to the impressive total of 40,000 in 10 years.
The Cuban president highlighted the fact that our internationalist health workers are writing a glorious page in the history of the country, the hemisphere and humanity, and are demonstrating what can be done with irrefutable facts, not with empty words.
He commented that it gave him pleasure to think that the future of the homeland would be steadily better, in the material order and in terms of all those indispensable aspects that make existence worthwhile, without waste or squandering, without consumerism and for the sake of a genuine quality of life because, as Fidel affirmed, without art, without culture, without education, without health, without security, without justice or equality, there is no total quality of life.
“Our country,” the president observed, “has the resources needed to assume development in those areas.
Before his address, Fidel conversed with various internationalists, some of whom – as he put it – are fulfilling missions beyond our borders, and others in remote areas within the country.
| » Go to more articles from PA's online edition. | » Go to sample articles from this month's print edition | » Support PA with your subscription |
