Post by Stallit 2 de Halfo on Nov 7, 2008 23:53:05 GMT
Timor, Cuba - and the making of a medical superpower
Every year Cuba, a Majority World country of only 10 million people, sends more than 30,000 volunteer medical workers to 93 countries around the world. Surgeon Katherine Edyvane recounts the little-told story from first-hand experience.
Although I had met Cuban medical workers in other situations, it was during a recent one-year assignment as surgeon advisor to the Dili National Hospital in Timor-Leste that I learned more about the scope and intent of Cuba’s huge international medical aid effort.
In November 2007, I was fortunate to be part of a Timorese Ministry of Health team evaluating the 30-bed district hospital in the remote district of Oecussi (population 57,000). This is an enclave of Timor-Leste, located within Indonesian-governed West Timor – a district so remote that the only access for the average Timorese is via a weekly 12-hour ferry trip from the capital, Dili.
Our team was lucky to fly into Oecussi. We were slightly unsettled to hear from the Kiwi pilot of our small plane that we might have to make several attempts at landing, due to the invariable presence of goats grazing on the grass-and-gravel airstrip. After a relieved but bumpy landing (without a goat in sight), we made our way to the Oecussi district hospital, an old Portuguese-style villa located on a main street lined with beautiful, shady, ancient fig trees.
Cubans were the only doctors staffing the hospital and the outlying remote clinics in the mountains. From them I heard, first-hand, of their tremendous work and extreme hardships................
www.newint.org/columns/essays/2008/10/01/timor-cuba/
Every year Cuba, a Majority World country of only 10 million people, sends more than 30,000 volunteer medical workers to 93 countries around the world. Surgeon Katherine Edyvane recounts the little-told story from first-hand experience.
Although I had met Cuban medical workers in other situations, it was during a recent one-year assignment as surgeon advisor to the Dili National Hospital in Timor-Leste that I learned more about the scope and intent of Cuba’s huge international medical aid effort.
In November 2007, I was fortunate to be part of a Timorese Ministry of Health team evaluating the 30-bed district hospital in the remote district of Oecussi (population 57,000). This is an enclave of Timor-Leste, located within Indonesian-governed West Timor – a district so remote that the only access for the average Timorese is via a weekly 12-hour ferry trip from the capital, Dili.
Our team was lucky to fly into Oecussi. We were slightly unsettled to hear from the Kiwi pilot of our small plane that we might have to make several attempts at landing, due to the invariable presence of goats grazing on the grass-and-gravel airstrip. After a relieved but bumpy landing (without a goat in sight), we made our way to the Oecussi district hospital, an old Portuguese-style villa located on a main street lined with beautiful, shady, ancient fig trees.
Cubans were the only doctors staffing the hospital and the outlying remote clinics in the mountains. From them I heard, first-hand, of their tremendous work and extreme hardships................
www.newint.org/columns/essays/2008/10/01/timor-cuba/