A salute to the brave people of Haiti who deserve nothing less than the best medical treatment. Unfortunately, not all Haitians can receive medical care from the Cubans, but the ones who do are very lucky. Close to 350 Cubans were already on the ground in Haiti when the quake happened along with 400 Haitian doctors, all trained at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (LASM), who are working with the Cubans. Since the earthquake, Cuba has sent an additional 100 doctors and last year students at LASM sent a letter to Raul pleading to have the “honor” to go to Haiti to help.
Cuba’s humanitarian assistance to the world began just a few years after the revolution when a Cuban boat dropped a load of arms to assist in the Algerian independence struggle. The boat returned with 76 injured Algerian guerillas along with 20 children from a refugee camp. During Guinea-Bissau’s war of independence from the Portuguese, Cuban ships regularly picked up the injured, which included many children, mostly orphans, and took them to Cuba for medical care and schooling. And since then, over 56,000 Cubans have worked in Africa as doctors, teachers, engineers, sports trainers and skilled workers.
It has been said many times that “when Africa called, Cuba answered.” Now we must add, when Haiti called, Cuba answered a long time ago and continues its service to the people of Haiti.
Here are the pics — venceremos! And here is the Granma story that accompanies the pictures.
haiti-cuba-venezuela 
Posted on January 24, 2010
0