| Kali Prasad |
Posted
on 18-Jul-01 06:23 PM
Some of you may qualify for a scholarship to study medical degree in Cuba. You do not have to agree with the communist regime, so not a bad deal? Good luck.
Source: Chronicle of higher education
www.chronicle.com
A Medical School in Cuba Trains Doctors for Poor Countries
Free program educates students from African, Latin America, and the United States
By MARION LLOYD
Havana
Nolvia Aguilar is not a Communist. But after two years of all-expenses-paid medical study in Cuba, the 22-year-old Honduran says President Fidel Castro is doing at least one thing right.
"Cuba's medical system is famous throughout the world. And to think that that's still the case after 10 years of economic hardship. It's incredible," says Ms. Aguilar. She is one of 4,000 foreign students who are studying free of charge at the Latin American Medical School, a sprawling, beachfront compound 20 miles west of the capital.
Some of the medical school's students are essentially pre-med, taking the equivalent of undergraduate courses in the basic sciences, before starting work on their medical degree. The program does not take Cuban students, but has become so extensive that, starting in September, foreign medical students in Cuba will outnumber Cubans in the island's other medical schools two to one, officials say. The Latin American Medical School is more than three times larger than the largest medical school in the United States, the University of Illinois, which has 1,261 students.
The majority of the students are from Central America, while about a third come from the Caribbean and Africa. And in April, the first eight students from the United States -- all members of ethnic or racial minority groups -- joined the program as part of the two traditionally hostile neighbors' efforts to expand academic exchanges. Another three United States students arrived this month, and 50 more are expected to go in August, according to the foundation selecting the students.
The medical school was founded two years ago. At the time, starting a new venture in one of the most expensive arenas of higher education seemed an unlikely proposition for a country that had been reeling economically since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Despite recent improvements, just getting enough to eat is a daily struggle. But supporters say the scholarship program is testimony to President Castro's commitment to exporting his Communist revolution to benefit the world's poor.
"Cuba's doctors see medicine as a humanitarian pursuit, not a financial one," says Nancy Nunez, the school's director of international relations. "Fidel Castro saw a chance to spread that kind of vocation and in the process benefit those people who need it the most." Critics see the school as Cuba's attempt to curry favor with Central and Latin America, now that its Soviet patron is gone, and as a public-relations effort to portray itself as humanitarian in the face of the economic hardship created by the United States' embargo.
Cuba has traditionally been better known for exporting revolution than humanitarian aid, deploying tens of thousands of soldiers to support Communist movements in Latin America and Africa. But the island also has a long history of sending doctors to work in the world's poorest areas; since 1967, 20,000 Cuban doctors have done service in Africa, according to government figures. The island also offered scholarships to 25,000 African students in the 1980's, and 2,000 of those graduated with medical degrees.
In the post-cold-war era, Mr. Castro has increased that commitment and focused on winning allies by using the island's most marketable resource -- its glut of highly trained doctors from its large network of medical schools.
The new medical school had its origins in the devastating sweep of Hurricane Mitch through Central America in October 1998, the worst natural disaster to hit the region in a century. Cuba flew at least 1,000 doctors -- more than any other country -- to help in the rescue mission in the region. The following weeks of disaster work exposed the serious shortage of qualified doctors in the region. So in February 1999, Mr. Castro started the medical school to train students from poor areas, on the condition that they would return to serve in the neediest areas, in Central America and beyond.
"What Cuba wants to show is that if a country of such limited material and economic resources can do something ... the industrialized world can do infinitely more," Mr. Castro was quoted as saying in a speech published in November 1998 in Granma, the Communist Party daily.
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