Cuba graduates doctors from Haiti and and Mali
- Submitted by: admin
- Health and Medicine
- 07 / 06 / 2007
Dr. Rosa Duconger, dean of the faculty, said the training of these doctors will help transform the poor health care situation in their countries by meeting the needs of the population.
During their years of studying in Cuba, Duconger said the students were able to take advantage of the wealth of experiences of the med school, which also trains Cuban doctors, and had a solid educational program that emphasized health promotion and disease prevention.
The students carried out their clinical internships at primary care facilities and general hospitals as well as the gynecological and pediatric teaching hospitals of Santiago de Cuba, which are reference points for public health in the eastern part of the island.
Duconger noted that this is the third graduation of Haitian doctors studying in Santiago. With the new grads, 305 doctors have graduated from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
The project to train Haitian physicians began in 1999, geared to graduate 500 doctors within a decade. Presently 240 students are in their final years of classes.
The dean said the ties with Mali began in September 2001 when the first hundred students came to study medicine. Soon, the first 46 will graduate.
Although Mali is not in the Caribbean, but in Sub-Saharan Africa, she said it was included in the faculty program due to its great need for health care personnel.
Currently a total of 788 foreign students from ten countries including the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guyana, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Djibouti are studying at the Caribbean Medical Faculty.
Numerous graduates will go on to specialize in areas such as surgery, pediatrics, gynecology and community medicine as part of Cubas cooperation in health with the participating countries.
Comments