HEALTH: Cuba Trains Doctors from 67 Ethnic Groups

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 24 2001 (IPS) - Young people from 67 different ethnic groups from the Americas and Africa are studying medicine in Cuba with the commitment to return to their medically underserved communities to provide primary health care services.

The youth, who have brought with them a broad spectrum of customs and languages, have all assumed an unwritten agreement to return home after graduating from the six-year medical school programme, and to achieve concrete results in their communities within 10 years.

“We came with the goal of preparing ourselves to design self- sustainable health projects in our communities,” Luter Castillo, 23, told IPS.

Castillo is one of 38 Garifuna people from Honduras studying at the Latin American School of Medical Sciences, located 25 kms from Havana.

A total of 5,011 young people from four countries in Africa and 20 countries in the Americas are studying at the school, including 12 students from the United States who could not afford the tuition, and were granted scholarships by the Cuban government.

“They give us everything: a uniform, study materials, including books, which are expensive in any country, room and board, and even pocket money,” said Victoria Vásquez, from the department of Quiché in Guatemala.

When they graduate, Vásquez and her fellow Guatemalans – who number 550 at the school – will replace the Cuban doctors who have been working in rural areas of Guatemala for nearly three years as part of Cuba’s health care cooperation programme in Central America.

Statistics indicate that the Cuban physicians working in Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, have helped bring about concrete results, like a drop in infant mortality from 40 per 1,000 live births in November 1998 to 22.2 per 1,000 in 1999 and 18.6 per 1,000 last year.

“Some 500 trained doctors distributed throughout our territory will signify an enormous stride in our country’s development process,” Guatemalan Ambassador to Cuba Hugo Guzmán told IPS.

The new Cuban-trained doctors will be no less significant for Honduras, where half of the population of six million lives below the poverty line, 18 percent lives in areas without access to health services, and 60 percent cannot afford health care, according to United Nations figures.

“Among our people, the situation is even worse,” said Castillo, who cited statistics showing that 80 percent of indigenous and Garifuna children under seven suffer from chronic malnutrition in Honduras.

Honduras is home to some 500,000 indigenous people, as well as approximately 275,000 Garifuna living in 46 villages on the Caribbean, along the country’s northern coast.

The Garifuna, or Black Caribes, are a unique ethnic group that emerged from a mix of African and Arawak Indian cultures in the Caribbean, after British slave ships were wrecked off the coast of Saint Vincent in the 17th century.

In the late 18th century, the Garifuna were driven off the island of Saint Vincent and taken by the British to the island of Roatan, near Honduras, after which they moved to the mainland and settled in fishing villages along the Honduran coast.

“There is no hospital in any of our communities, and the question of health care is a touchy one, since we have no medicine and no doctors,” said Castillo.

In his precise, rapid-fire style, the young man explained that the Garifuna studying under scholarship in Cuba are committed to returning to their communities to set up medical posts in each village.

“The programme should be self-sustainable. We must find the way to develop to the utmost the use of natural medicines available in our territory, and also find the way to guarantee an adequate diet for our people. We are already studying Cuba’s experience in urban agriculture,” he commented.

Castillo said he believed that only someone “who comes from that zone would return to it, due to the conditions of poverty, and the lack of electricity and potable water. It is not likely that someone would abandon the comfort of their city to live with our people, understand them and respect their culture.”

Ambassador Guzmán, meanwhile, pointed out that Guatemala, a country of 12 million, was home to 7.9 million indigenous people distributed in 22 distinct ethnic communities, most of which are represented at the medical school by at least one student.

Guzmán said the young doctors would return home with academic and professional training, but with their cultural and ethnic- religious identities intact – a fact that will make them uniquely effective in the social labour they will undertake in their home communities.

Meanwhile, 35 of the 286 Chileans studying in the medical school are Mapuche Indians, who are also committed to “basically working, once they graduate, in communities where there are currently no primary health services, let alone specialised health care,” said Soledad Millacura, 30.

The young woman said the medical school not only respected, but actively encouraged, the cultural identity of each student. “We enrich each other mutually with the diversity of our indigenous cultures, which are many, and of our countries,” said Millacura.

The Latin American School of Medical Sciences was officially inaugurated in November 1999 with the presence of the leaders attending the ninth Ibero-American Summit in Cuba, although several hundred students from Central America were already studying there.

Cuba initially turned to Ibero-America – Latin America, Spain and Portugal – with a proposal for a school aimed at training health professionals from poor countries, in its search for partners willing to finance the students’ round-trip tickets and provide stipends for their personal expenses.

But the project is still wholly financed by the Cuban government in its attempt to follow up on its medical assistance programme launched in the wake of the devastation wrought in the Caribbean and Central America by hurricanes George and Mitch in late 1998.

The study programme is demanding, and takes six years, divided into 12 semesters. The students graduate as doctors in general medicine.

“These youngsters will leave here prepared to pass any exam, as long as it is fair,” said the vice-rector of the medical school, Luis Angel Selva. He added that 79.8 percent of the first graduating class had completed their studies, “a high level, comparable to our national average.”

The idea is to train doctors in general medicine oriented towards providing primary health care services to medically underserved communities – health professionals capable of working under difficult circumstances and in accordance with their region’s specific needs for sustainable human development, said Selva.