Cuban Health Highlighted
Medicine is picking up pace strongly in Cuba, and we have the human capital, willpower and wish to cooperate will all the peoples in the world, President Fidel Castro said.

In his closing speech of the 9th International Seminar on Primary Health Care, the Cuban leader referred to thousands of Cuban doctors who are helping poor people and victims of natural disasters worldwide.

In Venezuela, Guatemala, Bolivia, Pakistan, East Timor, just to mention a few examples, our health professionals are giving free medical care.

Thousands of lives have been saved, millions of people have been treated, infant mortality has been reduced and an undetermined number of operations have been performed as a result of international cooperation.

The country is currently ready to perform 1.5 million eye surgeries a year, and conditions are being created to operate five million patients, mainly from Latin American and Caribbean countries, a region with a large number of people with eye problems.

Hundreds of foreign doctors are doing studies in about 100 medical faculties as part of the Island"s program to improve health conditions of the poor.

Fidel Castro highlighted Cuba"s breakthroughs in rehabilitation and physiotherapy, as he recalled the first family doctors prepared 20 years ago.

He invited participants to hold the next Seminar on Primary Health Care in Havana in two years.