Cuba now has 220 doctors and health staff working in the disaster relief in Port au Prince, Haiti along with ten tons of medicines flown in to meet the most pressing needs. Numerous young Haitian doctors who studied medicine on scholarships in Cuba have joined in the effort, including 37 who arrived from Cuba on Saturday.
Read MoreCuba’s mammoth medical effort in post-earthquake Haiti is receiving reinforcements from Venezuelan and Dominican doctors who graduated at Havana’s Latin American Medical School. For numerous years Cuba has had some 400 doctors and medical staff working full-time throughout Haiti, the most impoverished nation in Latin American and the Caribbean. With the current situation, dozens more specialists in emergency care have arrived.
Read MorePedro began his comments by saying that the Cuban people are asked for greater effort, understanding and trust, but that authorities were continuing to turn their backs on them and that their problems remained on the back burner, with the excuses being the nation’s lack of resources and the US trade blockade.
Read MoreThe huge Houston Port Authority has added a weekly shipping line to Cuba in a move that could bring considerable business if the US embargo on the Caribbean island is ever dropped.
Read MoreThe Dominican Republic, which has historically regarded its Haitian neighbor with suspicion, has turned toward Haiti with a tremendous outpouring of aid and love since a devastating earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.
Read MoreUS Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has thanked the Cuban government for the opening of its airspace to aircraft with emergency and health evacuation missions from Haiti. For several years Cuba already had over 400 doctors and other health staff working in Haiti, and with reinforcements arriving from a special emergency service brigade, the island is the main health care provider facing up to the crisis.
Read MoreCanadian airlines will be granted access to fly between multiple domestic locations within Cuba announced The Canadian Press on Friday. Canada provides Cuba with over 40 percent of its overall tourists. Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, De JesDus Vicente Sotolongo, told The Press that the measure would apply to four Canadian charter airlines that currently run tours to Cuba: Air Transat, Sunwing Airlines, WestJet and Canjet Airlines.
Read MoreA tragedy has occurred at the main Havana Psychiatric Hospital with 26 patients dying, possibly from hypothermia during one digit cold this past week, informed the Cuban Public Health Ministry on Friday. The ministry said the exact cause of the deaths at the 2,500 patient facility is still under investigation and that “deficiencies were found in measures taken at the hospital.”
Read More“Whites came here of their own will, as settlers, with life goals that were often realized. Blacks were brought here by force and turned into slaves. These are different points of departure that cannot be forgotten, nor can they be avoided, and their weight is still felt today… What affects us politically from the point of view of our international and national image is to have a discourse that doesn’t correspond to reality, because until very recently we said there were no racial problems in Cuba.”
Read MoreThe Cuban government has authorized the US military to fly over Cuban territory during their aid operations to Haiti and evacuation of victims. White House spokesperson Tommy Vietor was quoted by IPS as saying the permission will greatly reduce the duration of the flights. The US occupies a portion of Cuban territory at Guantanamo Bay, where it maintains a naval base and prison camp.
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