Tegucigalpa, May 23 (Prensa Latina) The Minister of Science and Technology of Honduras, Luther Castillo, today praised the work carried out by Cuban medical brigades in more than 100 countries, including some with high levels of development.
By Eduardo Rodríguez-Baz
During a pleasant conversation with Prensa Latina in Tegucigalpa, Castillo shared his assessments of 62 years of Cuban medical cooperation worldwide, which began in 1963 with the arrival in Algeria of a contingent of health professionals from the largest of the Antilles.
Over six decades, some 600,000 health workers from this small Caribbean island carried out missions in 165 nations, with achievements such as the fight against Ebola in Africa, blindness in Latin America, cholera in Haiti, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Warmth, comprehensive patient care, and the ability to feel the pain of others and serve the most vulnerable with all the love and openness in the world are traits that distinguish Cuban doctors, the young minister emphasized.
A graduate of Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), the Secretary of State said that the passage through this Central American nation of numerous Cuban brigades has been “the deepest relief for bearing the pain of the poorest, the most vilified in this country.”
He recalled that the first of these groups of “white coats” landed in Honduras in 1998, immediately after the devastating Hurricane Mitch, which left a trail of destruction and thousands of lives lost in its wake.
“One of the unique features of this aid is that the Cubans came here and traveled to the most difficult-to-reach areas; they didn’t go to the big cities, but to those places where they could take on the pain of our mothers and grandmothers and treat them without shame,” he emphasized.
After training as a doctor at the prestigious ELAM, Castillo is recognized as the first Honduran, and also a member of the Garifuna ethnic group, to graduate from Harvard University with a postgraduate degree in Public Policy and Management and a Master’s degree in Public Administration.
On behalf of the Honduran people, we are grateful for this Cuban collaboration, which has touched our people with divine hands, those most in need, to provide them with comprehensive care, he said.
Regarding how this cooperation is currently implemented, he explained that there are more than 100 doctors from Honduras, distributed in public hospitals and providing care in certain specialties that we don’t have.
“Today, we have a flagship geriatrics program, run by the National Institute of Retirement and Pensions for Employees and Officials of the Executive Branch and the National Institute for Teachers’ Welfare.
Cuban geriatricians caring for our elderly population who are already retired, he added.
He also praised the impeccable work of the well-known Operation Miracle, which was previously in Honduras, dismantled after the 2009 coup d’état against then constitutional president Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) and returned to the country with the victory of President Xiomara Castro.
This team of Cuban ophthalmologists performs free surgeries in three clinics located in Siguatepeque (Comayagua), Colinas (Santa Bárbara), and Tegucigalpa, where they treat conditions such as cataracts, pterygium, chalazion, and other eye conditions.
“Surgeries that cost thousands of lempiras (the Honduran currency) and that people can’t afford because they’re so expensive,” he said.
He emphasized that “Hondurans are aware of the significance and value of this specialized medical care; they know its cost.”
When questioned about the U.S. government’s fierce crusade against Cuba’s international medical contributions, the Honduran Minister of Science and Technology opined that the U.S. administration is deeply aware of the significance of the work of the island’s doctors.
“That’s why (Washington’s) concern is building narratives to try to denigrate this work, to tarnish the very humane and profound mission that Cuba carries out in the world,” he said.
This isn’t a new campaign; it’s been going on for a long time. All they do is occasionally change the narrative and the conceptualizations, he warned.
“But nothing they implement can delegitimize the divine work of Cuban doctors internationally, touching and healing wounds and souls, always putting themselves in the patient’s shoes,” he asserted.
In his opinion, no concept, no matter how degrading, can undermine the altruism of the Caribbean country’s healthcare workers, as well as their scientific and technical quality and the impeccable humanism they profess, he emphasized.
All those who have been touched by those wonderful hands, from all walks of life, bear witness to the immense work created by the Cuban Revolution, and bear witness to what it means to be treated by Cuban doctors, he emphasized.
Latin America and the Caribbean, he said, are deeply grateful to these brigades that help so much to improve the lives of our people.
When asked by Prensa Latina about his professional training at the Latin American School of Medicine, the minister considered the Caribbean nation his second home.
“More than 31,000 doctors from a hundred countries—that’s the reach of ELAM graduates, who have become ambassadors who can speak the truth about the Cuban Revolution and recount the greatness of that project, not from what they read in books, but from what they experienced firsthand,” he added.
“Standing alongside a people in need, but who knew how to share with us the best they have, not what they have left over, is a difficult concept to understand in this neoliberal context, but that is true solidarity,” Castillo noted.
For the Honduran doctor, that is the essence of the Cuban medical teachings we learned at ELAM.
“As the heroic guerrilla fighter said, being able to always feel, deep down, any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world, is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary doctor,” the minister concluded, paraphrasing the Argentine Ernesto Che Guevara.
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