Annual Health Prize awarded to research on vaccination

 

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 16 (ACN) The research "Vaccination against COVID-19 in Cuba: a successful experience of innovative strategy in health" received the Annual Health Grand Prize, the highest award granted by the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) to the most relevant scientific results in the field.

The study, integrated by a collective of 50 authors, deserved the award for the feat that immunization represented in organizational, scientific and health terms, the high degree of complexity as a health intervention, for its high level of trans and multidisciplinarity, for the intersectoral efforts and the decisive contribution made to the control of the COVID-19 pandemic in Cuba.

At the award ceremony of this 45th edition of the contest, presided over by Jorge Luis Broche Lorenzo, member of the Secretariat and head of the Department of Attention to the Social Sector of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, and José Angel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health, it was ratified that the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the scientific work of professionals in the sector, but became a very fruitful stage for science and innovation activity.

Pedro Véliz Martínez, director of the National Council of Scientific Health Societies, said that the jury of the Annual Award was made up of 45 PhDs from all over the country and more than 50 experts participated and evaluated the 399 competing papers, 206 more than in the previous edition.
On this occasion, some 70 prizes were awarded in the categories of student work, specialty, master's and doctoral theses, for relevant scientific visibility, scientific articles, applied research, technological research, scientific theory and books.

Ileana Morales Suarez, director of Science and Technological Innovation of Minsap, pointed out that Cuban science in the field of health has had in its historical development relevant figures who contributed to the creation of paradigms that are maintained to this day, which serve as inspiration and sustenance to the current generation.  

The Annual Award, she said, constitutes the final moment of a stage of intense work of selection and presentation of the most relevant results, and in these two years, as never before, scientists and professionals intensively researched on the same topic.

For the doctor, 2023 will come with many challenges related to the development of the national health system, Cuban science, its scientists, academics, professionals and experts, who will continue working to accompany each step of this process of necessary and permanent improvement in favor of life.