What’s So New About Cuba’s Medical Internationalism?

[Judi Lynn]

3. We've had DU'ers who were treated by Cuban docs both in their domestic (for Cubans) offices

and in the offices designated for Cuban tourists and they have taken the time to post their experiences, and both sides of Cuban medical treatment got very positive reviews from them.

I've also read comments from other posters at the old CNN US-Cuba relations message board, and read the same kind of experiences there.

Cuba has been known internationally for decades for its physicians.

Cuba also has an international program, accepting poor students from many countries, including the United States, to train young medical students, provide housing and food, as well, with the agreement they will go back to their home countries and devote an agreed period of time working with and for the poor of their countries who cannot afford to pay ordinary doctors for their own treatment.

As US graduates have asserted, after graduation, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity they cherish. Example:

A Dream Come True: Cuba’s Free Medical School
By Kayce T. Ataiyero

HAVANA – Ever since she was five years old, Chasiti Falls has known two things: She wanted to be a doctor and she wanted to travel the world. But dreams aren't free in America. They often require money and resources – things that Falls didn't have.

"I always had that aspiration that I was gonna go somewhere and it just led me," Falls said. "You follow the yellow brick road and you see the wizard at the end."

Latin American School of MedicineAs fate would have it, Falls' wizard showed up a year ago on a street corner in her hometown of Atlanta. A man pulled her over and handed her a flyer on the Medical School Scholarship Program at the Latin American School of Medical Sciences in Cuba. It was just the ticket the 30-something mother of one needed to change her life. Suddenly, a woman who had never set foot outside the United States found herself 90-miles offshore in Havana, with her American dream being underwritten by the Cuban government.

"I wanted the best so I came to Cuba. And it was free," Falls said, in explaining why she chose to attend the medical school. "Because I am a parent and have to pay rent and keep the lights on, living free with a bunk mate is heaven to me. I could be at home struggling."

Falls is one of 92 American students – more than half of them black – who are enrolled in the scholarship program. Started by Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000, the program offers low-income students a free medical school education in Cuba. In exchange, the students must agree to go back to the United States to provide much needed health care in underserved communities.

The students receive tuition, books, room and board for six years. They are also provided Spanish language immersion courses, if necessary. All of the instruction at the school is conducted in Spanish.

Rev. Lucius Walker, executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, the New York-based group that facilitates the program stateside, said students are given the rare opportunity to learn from world-renowned doctors for free. Walker said the program is working to address a critical need in the black community, which is seeing an increasing number of health care providers leave. Currently, only about six percent of U.S. doctors are black.

More:
http://www.ifajs.org/cuba/ataiyero_dream.html

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A very quick search produced this article:

Eight Americans graduate from free Cuban medical school

Posted 7/25/2007 3:42 AM


[font size=1]
From left to right: Melissa Barber, Carmen Landau, Evelyn Erickson, Toussaint Reynolds, Jose
De Leon, Kenya Bingham, Wing Wu and Teresa Thomas. The eight Americans were among more
than 2,100 graduates who received diplomas Tuesday at Havana's Karl Marx theater. [/font]

HAVANA (AP) — Eight Americans who graduated from a Cuban medical school say they will put the education paid for by Fidel Castro's communist government to use in hospitals back home.

Four New Yorkers, three Californians and a Minnesotan, all from minority backgrounds, have studied in Havana since April 2001, forming the first class of American graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine.

One other American previously graduated from the school after transferring from a U.S. university, but the six women and two men graduating Tuesday were the first Americans to complete the entire six-year program since Castro offered the free medical training to U.S. students. The offer followed a meeting a delegation from the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus.

The students said that much of what they learned in Cuba matched the curriculum at American medical schools, but that instructors here placed a special emphasis on preventative care.

"I will be heading back to the United States with a great advantage over the American students who have stayed there," said Wing Wu, from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"I've learned that medicine is not a business, it's social, it's humane," said Toussaint Reynolds, a graduate from Massapequa, New York. "I will be a better doctor in the United States for it."

More:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-07-25-cuba_N.htm