Grads Join Cuba’s Haiti Medical Effort

HAVANA TIMES, Jan 16 — Cuba’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 (ELAM), reported Juventud Rebelde newspaper.

A Cuban doctor working in a field hospital in the Haitian capital of Port au Prince spoke with Cuban TV on the grim situation the medical teams are facing.  She noted:  “We are receiving large numbers of patients…  many come in very poor condition and amputations have increased.”

Other reports in from Port au Prince inform that time is running out in the effort to rescue those people still beneath the rubble.

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.