INFORMATIVE NOTE

INSTEAD of Saturday, September 17 as announced, the graduation of Cuban medical students for the year 2004-2005 year will now take place on Monday, September 19. This singularly important event will begin at 5:00 p.m. at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), which already occupies an important position among the most outstanding medical institutions at international level.

On that day, an organization unprecedented in the world is to be established: the International Contingent of Doctors Specializing in Disasters and Serious Epidemics. This will take the place of the medical brigade assembled to support the people of the United States as soon as Katrina hit the southern part of that country with all its force. In addition to providing support to a given nation, the contingent’s objective is the immediate cooperation of specially trained personnel with any country to suffer a similar disaster, particularly those that face the threat of severe hurricanes, floods or other natural phenomena of that magnitude. It will bear the same name given the medical brigade created in the wake of the tragedy that the U.S. people have just suffered, that of Henry Reeve, a combatant from that northern nation who fought heroically and gave his life for Cuba’s independence.

In the Plaza of the Nations, an esplanade located between the school and the sea, 12,000 professionals and students of medical science in recent years are to meet up, along with the families of the new graduates. This select representation of medicine will include the 1,586 valiant members of what – to that date – has been the Henry Reeve Medical Brigade, who have continued to train intensively at ELAM while awaiting a response that has not yet arrived and perhaps never will.

The September 19 event will be a historical one on account of its enormous symbolism and its profound sense of human solidarity.

September 12, 2005

(Granma)September 13, 2005