Cuba recalls start of its international medical cooperation

 HAVANA, Cuba, May 23 (ACN) Cuba recalls today the beginning of a history of solidarity led by its health workers, who made up the island’s first medical contingent 61 years ago in Algeria.

“The departure to that sister country of a medical brigade on May 23, 1963 marked the birth of a work of endless love that the Cubans offered to the world,” Roberto Morales Ojeda, Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Party, wrote in a post on X.

“Since then, Cuba has given the world doctors, not bombs,” he added, evoking the words of the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, which have become the motto of Cuba’s cooperation.

On his end, José Ángel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health, wrote: “Throughout six decades, more than 600,000 health workers have provided their services in 165 nations, where they have treated more than two billion patients with sensitivity, heroism, dedication and professionalism.

And he added: "Holding a special place in the history of Cuban international medical cooperation is the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Situations of Disasters and Serious Epidemics, created by Fidel in 2005, whose members went to Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and fought cholera and the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Guinea-Conakry and Liberia. Furthermore, 58 Cuban medical brigades worked in 42 nations to help control the COVID-19 pandemic.”