Cuba Committed to Haiti on Health Aid

HAVANA TIMES, Feb. 9 — Cuban Vice President Esteban Lazo arrived to Haiti on Monday to meet with Haitian President Rene Preval and visit the Cuban medical brigade.

Lazo bore a message from former President Fidel Castro for the over 400 Cubans working in the neighboring Caribbean nation at five tent hospitals in and around the capital and at other facilities throughout the country.  “Today, you are writing one of the most beautiful pages in the history of human medicine,” wrote Castro.

Lazo told President Preval that he had come in representation of the people and government of Cuba “to reaffirm our solidarity as an expression of the deep historic and brotherly ties that bind us.”

For over a decade Cuba has maintained a commitment to health care assistance in Haiti that has also included the training of several hundred young Haitian doctors in Cuba.  Preval noted: “They did not wait for the earthquake to be with us,” reported the Cuban News Agency.

Traveling with Lazo to Haiti are Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and deputy Health minister Marcia Cobas.  The high level delegation will also visit the Haitian and US doctors working alongside the Cubans in the earthquake recovery effort.