The Latin American School of Medicine [Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, ELAM] was commemorated for its 10th anniversary on November 15, 2009. Minister of public health Dr. José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera highlighted the importance of the school of medicine, calling it an expression of Fidel Castro’s ideals, his concept of human beings and of the world, and of the principles that sustain a genuine revolution.
He praised the students at the school, affirming that, in their integration, they constitute a reflection of what humanity needs: a sentiment that is “rooted and strengthened when relations among them demonstrate that there are no differences. They are the same human beings with the same destiny, needs and objectives, with the same search for a better future.” The public health minister also had words of praise for the school’s staff and workers that have made possible “a beautiful history at a time in which processes of great significance are occurring in Latin America in the struggle to attain a better world for our peoples.”
During ELAM’s 10 years of existence, 7,256 doctors from 30 countries have received training as comprehensive general doctors directed toward primary health care “at a high scientific-technical, humanist, ethical level of solidarity, capable of acting in their environment in accordance with regional health needs, as a contribution to sustainable human development.” The current intake at ELAM totals 21,359 students, including 12,017 on the new training program for Latin American doctors, distributed in the country’s medical science universities and faculties, the ELAM headquarters and the Caribbean Faculty in Santiago de Cuba, and in which 100 countries are represented. The majority of students are from modest backgrounds, the sons and daughters of workers and campesinos, some from very poor families and remote communities of different origins and ethnicities. ELAM Chancellor Dr. Juan Carrizo Estévez stressed that the fundamental characteristic of the doctors trained in Cuba is the development of professional ethical values, internationalist and cooperative in nature, and a high level of human sensibility, linked to a strong scientific-technical base.
Alihuen Antileo García, a Mapuche from Chile and president of the ELAM student body, and Dr. Carlos Flores García, a Guatemalan from the first ELAM graduation in 2005, also spoke at the event. Alihuen expressed his conviction that the ELAM road is, “Medicine in love with the art of prevention and cure,” not that of checkbook doctors trained within capitalism, and affirmed that “the sons and daughters of excluded humanity are being educated no more and no less than in Cuba.” Dr. Flores reflected that “while the United States is maintaining a School of the Americas in our land, from which hundreds of soldiers graduate for repressive armies in Latin America, and is opening military bases, the thousands of doctors who have already graduated from ELAM are going about saving lives, opening posts and health centers.” For that reason, “on a day like today I exhort the president of that nation to follow Cuba’s example. Found schools of medicine, Mr. President, help us in this region to build knowledge!”
For full article, see http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/noviembre/lun16/elam.html
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