One of the basic presuppositions of the anti-Cuban campaign over human rights has been to place a false and artificial division in the human rights the Cuban people enjoy. Taking as their basic premise a refusal to admit that all categories of human rights enshrined in the Declaration of Vienna are indivisible and interdependent, the anti-Cuba campaign ideologues admit what the statistics do not allow them to hide, the undeniable achievements of the Cuban Revolution in the enjoyment of social and cultural rights of Cubans. Nevertheless, and as if it were possible to make progress in education, culture without the existence of civil and political right, they try to fabricate the false thesis that the Cuban political system is incompatible with the enjoyment of civil and political rights and fundamental liberties.

In a previous chapter the untruth of the charges of alleged violations of civil and political rights and fundamental freedoms in Cuba was established. A synopsis was given of some of the questions having to do with the Cuban people’s enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights.

The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959 made it possible to put an end to the neo-colonial domination that the United States had over the Cuban people’s natural and human resources, and laid the foundations for a fairer society in which all the human rights of each and every Cuban are protected.

Even though this new situation can be seen in the successes achieved in all areas of the country’s life, also visible are the disastrous consequences of the United States’ policy of hostility, blockade, and aggression against the Cuban people.

A.- One of humankind’s essential rights: work

In spite of the severe international recession in recent years and the measures for flexibilising, deregulating and making work less secure which have become entrenched in the area of labour relations in many parts of the world, in Cuba the right to work is guaranteed as an inalienable human right.

Before the triumph of the Revolution, 24% of the workforce were unemployed and around 200,000 people were visibly underemployed, a figure that rose considerably when the sugar harvest was not in process. Approximately 60% of wage earners and self employed people received less than the existing minimum wage. Social security, besides being inadequate only covered 50% of the workers.

The unemployment rate for women and young people was double or triple that for adult men and the use of child labour was a common practice. In 1958, 133,000 children under employment age were working. When the Revolution triumphed there were only 194,000 women employed; 70% of them were domestic workers. During this period 100,000 young people attained employment age but for them there was no real hope of finding a job.

When the means of production became social property, it was possible to make the essential changes which resulted in the creation of new sources of employment, A million and a half permanent new jobs were created between 1959 and 1975 with a annual average growth rate of employment of 4%. Women’s employment rose from 12.6% in 1959 to 28% in 1976, in other words more than 700,000 joined the workforce.
In the last few years, as the country recovers from the heavy blow dealt by special period in the first half of the 90s, new employment programmes were initiated; these have created 800,000 new jobs.

The sources of permanent new jobs are mostly in the social programmes recently set in motion. These include jobs for teachers who have graduated from intensive training courses, for computer science teachers, social workers, nurses, video and television room operators, and urban agriculture workers.

The revolutionary idea of making training upgrading, or studying something new as a form of work has been developed and implemented in Cuba. This has allowed tens of thousands of young people between 17 and 29 years of age, who were not studying or working —most of them women— to obtain secondary school graduation or even go on to post secondary education and be paid while doing so. 107,302 young people are currently registered. There are 8,000 instructors teaching them in 508 centres throughout the country. At the end of 2003,
30,000 of these young people were already studying at post secondary level.

The idea of study as work is being extended to workers who have been made redundant and where there is no possibly for them to find new jobs straight away. Thus the best way to find new jobs for them is to give them the necessary training. This is now being done with sugar workers.

The restructuration of the sugar industry was implemented while preserving and developing the human capital there. These process has involved 219,594 workers of whom 59% have found work in other parts of the sugar industry, 10% on farms, 20% work studying and 7% have found employment with other enterprises. There are around 122,000 workers studying in the retraining programme, 65,310 of them work studying.

The battle for full employment has a strategy and a well worked out programme which guarantees each citizen useful and productive employment. The principles behind this plan are:

A permanent employment plan agreed to with the provinces

Placement is guaranteed for all of those completing one of the Revolution’s social programmes

Completing and stabilising the labour force in urban agriculture

Consolidating the Overall Upgrading Course for Young People.

Job placement for all university, graduates from technical and professional education and from trades schools

Retraining so as to find new jobs for those made redundant by the elimination of their jobs

Filling necessary vacancies

Full employment for the disabled if they so desire

Giving priority in employment to woman and young people

Special attention given to the municipalities with the highest unemployment rate and reducing the unemployment rate to less than 5%.

As a result of employment programmes, more than 100,000 new jobs were created in 2003 which allowed us to lower the unemployment rate to less than 3%.

Cuba is a signatory to 88 of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) agreements. It is in second place among Latin American countries for the highest number of agreements ratified and is one of top ten nations in terms of number of agreements ratified. The United States, for example, has only ratified 13 of the more than 184 agreements in existence.

B.- Guaranteeing existence: Social security and assistance

Social security in Cuba is a right with that makes no distinction based on race, sex, religious faith, or political ideology of the person.

Until 1959 the overwhelming majority of the Cuban people lived in a precarious situation, with a total lack of social protection or access to health, education, pension and retirement services.

The social insurance system in 1958 was in dire straits, their funds were in deficit because of the corruption and thieving of the ruling regime. The financial situation of most of the insurance funds was depressing. Social assistance was limited to the efforts of private charity institutions and some state institutions which only benefited a small strata of the population, mostly in Havana.

From 1959 on the Revolutionary state began to transform social insurance, designing a package of measures whose immediate aims included financial help to existing institutions in order to guarantee they met their obligations.

Today social security is a comprehensive system which includes security at work, on the job, of salaries and wages, in working conditions and training, and of nutrition, physical activity, individual development and the active participation of all citizens, including senior citizens. The main indication of this is the coverage given to 100% of the workers, their families and the population who need assistance.

Social Security covers the risks of illness and common accidents, occupational accidents, occupational disease, maternity, disability, old age and death. Social assistance provides protection to families and individuals in need in the form of subsidies. The benefits are given in money, service and kind.

In addition to the aforementioned benefits there are also social programmes for vulnerable groups of the population such as the differently abled, elderly people living alone and others and the aim of these programmes is to meet the social and economic needs these people have.

The Cuban Social Security System protects 1,438,295 people through Social Security and 331, 681 through Social Assistance; 2,739 million pesos was allotted from the State expenditure budget to the system in 2004 to cover its costs.

More than 15,000 social workers throughout the country are employed in this noble task. Their responsibility is to look after elderly people living alone, differently abled people, etc.

1. Care for elderly people

Cuba is not exempt from the demographic process of an aging population which is affecting the world. The total Cuban population is more than 11.2 million. It is one of the oldest populations in Latin America having more than one and a half million inhabitants over the age of 60, a figure destined to increase in the coming years. It is expected that the number of people in Cuba over 60 will increase to two and half million by the year 2005, that is, 25% of the population.

Health care for the elderly in Cuba complies with the basic principles of universality, being free of charge and accessibility.

The Ministry of Health runs the Programme of Care for the Elderly which work with the Multidisciplinary Gerontological Care Teams which is a component of the Family Doctor Programme. Similarly the geriatrics and gerontology speciality was started and a process of geriatrization of all the hospital and community based services is underway.

2. Care for the disabled

The Cuban government guarantees the human rights of those who are otherly abled based on the principle that every one has the same rights.

In Cuba, from 1959 on, concrete measure began to be implemented for disabled. More recently (1995) the Action Plan for Care for Disabled Persons was initiated, to ensure more coordination in matters concerning, employment, accessibility, health, education, training and use of information and communication technologies.

Cuba has developed new social services, such as the Home Care Worker, the Food Service and grants to mothers of children with severe disability, the use of computers and other audio-visual programmes, the progressive elimination of barriers to access, the programme for technical prosthetic aid, the system of close caption in the most important television programmes, (the Braille system in libraries and specialised finger telephone services for those who are deaf and blind, etc.

In 2002 the Cuba government carried out a nationwide clinical, psychological pedagogic and social survey of the disabled which allowed us to know more about their living conditions and health status, to assess the policies in place up to that time and to get new programmes and studies underway with the aim of improving the quality of life and full social integration of these Cubans.

There is an employment programme for the disabled (PROEMDIS), which has made it easier to integrate them into social life. Currently there is a fast track programme underway to find work for 75,113 disabled persons, identified in the genetic study we carried out, who are interested in and able to work.

As for new legislation, we should mention the 2003 Decree Law No. 234 dealing with maternity leave for female workers. This law increases the scope of the rights and benefits of this maternity leave which has been extended until the child reaches the age of three in the case of mothers with disabled children; the mother has the right to return to her job when her leave expires.

C.- The priority given to health in the Cuban system

Providing free medical attention to the Cuban population became one of the revolutionary government’s basic social pillars from the time it assumed power.

Before the Revolution, health and hospital care were mainly privately or provided to members of mutual societies. Medical facilities and personnel were mostly to be found in Havana where 65% of doctors and 62% of hospital beds were concentrated. There were virtually no medical services in rural areas, where nearly half of Cuba's population lived, and there was only one rural hospital that had only 10 beds and no doctors.

The percentage of people suffering from parasites was high (36.10%) as was that of those suffering from tuberculosis (13.99%), typhus (13.25%) and malaria (30.03%). Infant mortality was over sixty deaths per one thousand live births and life expectancy was only about 58 years. State health service was less than adequate and only 8% of the population obtained free medical attention.

After the triumph of the Revolution, public health services in Cuba showed an impressive level of development in successive stages.

1960. Creation of the National Health System. Creation of rural medical services. Creation of health areas and polyclinics. Vaccination with the involvement of the population.

1970. Decentralisation of teaching and of the health sector, delegation of responsibility to the provinces. Initiation of Mother and Child Programme

1980. Creation of the Family Doctor Programme. Introduction of advanced technologies. Fast track development of the medico-pharmaceutical industry.

1990 Introduction and development of science and technology’s achievements. Withstanding the double whammy of the U.S. blockade and the collapse of socialism in eastern Europe and the USSR.

2000 The stage when the system was consolidated, reformed and modernised. Increased participation by the community in health measures and actions.

2002 to date. New programmes to put advances in medical care into practice. Development of polyclinics as centres of the highest quality primary medical care. Repairs to doctors offices and to polyclinics. Fast track training course for nurses.

Cuba’s achievement in the field of health mean that ever since 1983 it has more than met the requirements of Health for Everyone agreed to in the context of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

However, currently far reaching transformations to health services are underway in order to go beyond what we have already achieved. One of the most important of these is a programme to bring services closer to the population, the extensive retraining programmes for medical personnel —at the beginning of 2003 there were 34,451 people registered in this— and the continued development of pharmaceutical drug production.

In order to be able to execute these transformations and to continue improving the quality of medical services, the state budget allocated 2,270 million pesos for this key area.

Some of the Cuban public health’s achievements in the last ten years can be summarised as follows:

67% of the medicines the country need are domestically produced

Programme for pre-natal diagnosis of congenital diseases. This has helped to prevent the birth of more than four thousand children with congenital deformities

Medical genetics programme to reduce Down Syndrome and other diseases

Improvement of intensive pre-natal, paediatric and adults therapies

Increase in the number of organ transplants performed

Discovery of the group B anti-meningococcus vaccine, the only one of its kind in the world

Production of Hepatitis B Vaccine

Discovery of PPG (atheromix), first choice therapy for treating high cholesterol, the major contributing factor to coronary risk

Decrease in the number of cases of cancer in the advanced stage and an increase in the survival rate. Production of monoclonal antibodies for cancer treatment. Manufacture of vaccines against the disease.

More exact classification of leukaemia and its treatment

Cure or control of retinitis pigmentosa

Production of melagenina, a pharmaceutical obtained for human placenta and used for treating vitiligo.

Production of high-quality, low-cost medicines.

Manufacture of equipment such as Neuronica (used for monitoring during operations), the Medicid (digital electroencephalogram), the Ozomed (for ozone therapy treatment) and SUMA (Unilateral Micro-Analytic System)

MAIN STRATEGIES USED IN HEALTH CARE FIELD

1. Reorienting the health system towards primary health care and the cornerstone of this, the family doctor and nurse

Cuba today has 381 health areas which are fully covered by the family doctor programme, of whom there are more than 30,000 spread throughout the country. More than 97% of the Cuban population is covered by a family doctor and a nurse and it is expected that this will increase to 100% in the next few years. Continuing to give priority status to care for the population’s health has been a strategic challenge and goal for the state and society as a whole.

There are also the polyclinic, the first link the Cuban public health chain, which since 1997 is considered to be among the 28 most complete health services in the world, according to an assessment done by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

2. Revitalisation of hospital care

During the 80s the country made a huge effort to extend and modernise its hospital services network, which meant improving coverage, accessibility, capacity and comfort and incorporating the most up-to-date technology into the services offered. Although substantial progress was made, the programme was interrupted by the special period but it is today once again underway with new enthusiasm and more ambitious goals. In 2002, the country had 265 hospitals and 55,864 beds.

3. Cutting-edge technology programmes and research institutes

Cuba has developed a series of top class medical care programmes to protect the population’s health. Some of the most noteworthy of these are the programmes for preventing diagnosing and treating cancer, treatment for those with renal insufficiency, the cardiocentres, the early diagnosis of congenital complaints, comprehensive pre-natal services, blood donor programmes and the production of blood products.

4. Medical education and internationalist aid

Compared to 1959 when there was only one medical faculty in Cuba and one dentistry faculty, Cuba today has four higher institutions of medical science,
24 faculties of medicine and four of dentistry and more than 50 health and nursing polytechnics. Most of the hospitals are also teaching institutions or medical science faculties. As a result of the development of this educational structure, in 2002 there were 67,079 doctors in the country compared to the 3000 that the Revolution had when it emerged victorious —another 3000 emigrated in the first few years after the Revolution in response to the incentives offered for this very purpose by the United States government whose aim was to dismantle the Cuban health service.

By 2005 the Latin American School of Medical Sciences (ELAM) expects registration to rise to 10,000 with Latin American students whose numbers include representatives of 66 ethnic groups and indigenous peoples from very isolated places where there is no health care. That same year the first doctors will graduate from ELAM; they are committed to return to their own countries once they have completed their studies. Hundreds mores young people from the Caribbean and Africa are also studying medicine in Cuba.

Cuba’s solidarity in the health field is not limited to education foreign students here. Currently, 14 thousand 732 Cubans collaborate in areas of health in 65 different countries. Cuba has implemented the Comprehensive Health Programme (PIS) which is welcomed by Governments and by the populations that benefit directly from it alike. Under the programme 3117 Cuban cooperators are serving in 22 countries, of whom 2412 are doctors. Another 10,000 Cuban doctors have recently joined these numbers. They are carrying out important medical services in the Plan Barrio Adentro (Into the Neighbourhoods Plan) all over Venezuela.

Under the Comprehensive Health Programme tripartite cooperation projects have been developed with several countries. The programme is supported by 95 non-governmental organisations from various parts of the world and by international bodies such as the WHO/PHO, the UNDP and UNICEF whose financial contributions, medical equipment and supplies are sent directly to the countries or places where the Cuban health cooperants are working.

Based on Cuba’s experience in the epidemiological control of HIV/AIDS and on the fact that our country has the human resources necessary to deal with this pandemic, Cuba, in the special period of sessions of the UN Assembly General on HIV/AIDS held in New York from 25 to 27 June 2001 proposed :

Providing 4,000 doctors and health professionals to create an infrastructure to supply the population in countries in need with the medicines prescribed and the necessary follow-up. These same doctors, etc. could educate and train very many specialists, nurses and health technicians.

Providing the professors needed to set up 20 medical faculties in several of the world’s countries, many of whom could be selected from among the doctors who are already working as part of the Comprehensive Health Programme. 1000 doctors could be trained every year in the countries that most need them.

Sending the doctors, educators, psychologists and other experts needed to advise and collaborate with the AIDS and other disease prevention campaigns.

Supplying the equipment and kits needed for the basic prevention programmes

Anti-retrovirus treatment for 30,000 patients.

All that would be needed is that the international community contribute the raw materials for the medicines, equipment and material resources for these goods and services. Cuba would make no profit and would contribute the salaries of the Cubans in its domestic currency, salaries being the most expensive component for international health cooperation bodies. Cuba would also supply what is most difficult to find, trained people willing to carry out this mission in the most isolated areas.

Subsequently, in the Summit of Caribbean Heads of State held in Havana on 8 December 2002 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the CARICOM countries, Cuba offered a programme supporting the regional strategy designed for fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Caribbean area. The programme proposed:

Sending 1000 health workers whose salaries would be paid by the Cuban State.

Sending the instructors and technicians needed to set up, in a country designated by CARICOM, a Technical Education Centre to teach nursing and other medical sciences at that level. Every year this institution could turn out up to two hundred young people from CARICOM countries who would be especially trained to treat patients with HIV/AIDS.

To provide free of charge no less than 30% of the value of the equipment and diagnostic kits produced in our country so that SUMA laboratories could be set up since this would it easier to carry out mass testing of the population. The cooperation offered would include installing, starting-up and technical assistance for the equipment and training local staff to use the aforementioned technology.

Cuba would be willing to share with other donors up to 40% of the value of these diagnostic kits and equipment in the case of Haiti.

Since its inception to date a total of 7,506 cooperators have served and are serving under the Comprehensive Health Programme.

Other aspects of the development of the Cuban Health System.

a) Mother and Child Programme. One of the most noteworthy aspects is the infant mortality rate which at the close of 2003 was 6.3 per 1000 live births.

b) The National Vaccination Programme. Cuba’s vaccination programme is one of those with the widest coverage in the world. Today all Cuban children are vaccinated against 13 infectious diseases and there is a broad range of projects to use other kinds of preventative and therapeutic vaccines for adults.

In 2004 the health service began to use the first Cuban tetravalent vaccine to protect children against four diseases (diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and hepatitis). Encouraging results have been obtained in the search for a pentavalent compound which would include antigens against haemophilus Influenzae type B. If the outcome is successful, this would be the first vaccine in the world against those five illnesses.

Also heartening are the advances in a therapeutic test vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and in four therapeutic anti-cancer vaccines which are in the clinical trial stage in Cuba and other countries.

b) Chronic non-communicable diseases. Cuba’s epidemiological profile is characterised by the preponderance of death due to chronic non-communicable diseases. Heart diseases, malignant tumours, cerebrovascular illnesses and accidents cause almost two thirds of the deaths in the country. Diabetes mellitus, hepatic cirrhosis, asthma and high blood pressure should also be mentioned as significant causes of death.

c) Communicable diseases. This programme’s main objective is to control communicable diseases to continue reducing morbidity and to control risk factors to prevent outbreaks and epidemics. Infectious disease are the main cause of death in the world: many of these diseases can be controlled with vaccines. In Cuba, a significant number of such dieses has been eliminated.

d) Care for the elderly. There is a National Programme for Care for the Elderly.

Major causes of death

When the Revolution emerged victorious, 14.2% of deaths was caused by infectious diseases. Today the proportion of deaths from infectious diseases and parasites has fallen so greatly it has all but disappeared. The major causes of death are heart and cerebrovascular diseases, malignant tumours, etc.

Although HIV/AIDS is a veritable threat to the continuing existence of the human race in other parts of the world, Cuba, thanks to the early adoption of strategies and to a government group for coordinating the national response to the epidemic, has managed to keep slow the spread of the disease.

To date 4,979 people infected with the virus have been detected, of these 2,221 have become ill and 1084 of the latter have died from AIDS.

The epidemic is considered to be at a low level, there being a prevalence of 0.05 of people between the ages of 15 and 49 infected with the disease; this is the lowest in the Americas and one of the lowest in the world.

Under the National Programme for the Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS people living with HIV and AIDS are provided with training, social and job security, specialised medical attention, which includes free anti-retroviral treatment and treatment for opportunistic diseases for 100% of those infected. An educational programme is being developed, which plans to offer sex education in schools, educational programmes specially designed for vulnerable groups, adolescents and the population in general. The programme’s main focus is on prevention.

Cuba has managed to contain this pandemic in spite of having limited access to 50% of the new drugs which are produced by U.S. companies or subsidiaries because of the severe economic, trade and financial blockade imposed on our country by the United States.

D.- Education: A Revolution within the Revolution.

The Government of the Republic of Cuba places the greatest importance on its citizens full enjoyment of the human right to education. Quality education which totally respects cultural identity and which includes values and principles that foster solidarity, social justice, mutual respect, patriotism and a profound knowledge of humanity’s historic, cultural and artist heritage and of its peoples’ customs have been the clear guidelines followed in developing Cuba’s educational system, from the triumph of the Revolution on.
In 1953 Cuba had only about 6.5 million inhabitants; more than half a million children had no school and more than 2 million people were completely or functionally illiterate. Only half of the school population went on to secondary school; there were 10,000 unemployed teachers; about 550,000 children aged between 6 and 14, almost half the total number, did not go to school. The population over the age of 15 had an average educational level of less than three years of primary school.

One of the first measures taken by the Revolutionary government was the eradication of illiteracy and the creation of the conditions to ensure free, good quality universal education at all levels, the results of which are clearly seen in Cuba’s achievements in this field.

If one takes the advances in the educational field into account, the goals set out by UNESCO for 2015 have already been met.

These results notwithstanding, and in order to continue improving the Cuban educational system, new educational strategies have been developed which have further empowered administrators, teachers and students to act as the protagonists of educational changes.

In order to continue developing education and implementing these new strategies, the Cuban State has allocated 3,825 million pesos to education in the 2004 budget.

As far as it has been able, the Cuban people has collaborated with other developing countries in the educational field. More than 17,000 young people from more than 110 countries are studying various subjects in Cuba, most of them at the higher level.

Cuba proposed a project to provide UNESCO with 20 scholarships a year which has been approved and is now in the revision and implementation phase. The project should begin in 2004 and is for countries in Africa but could possibly be extended to other regions.

Cuba has also offered its support for a universal literacy programme. Cuba would contribute a large part of the technology and specialist human resources needed. All that would have to be done is to mobilise an infinitesimal portion of the financial resources which float about the world every year and which would not exceed 0.01% of the GDP of OECD countries. If the programme proposed were put into practice, 1,500 million illiterate and semi-illiterate people all over the world could learn to read and write and study up to the sixth year of primary school.

1.-.The basic principles of Cuban education

a) The principle of mass education with equal access for all: Education is a right and a duty of all Cuban citizens. We have an educational system which covers all educational levels without distinction on the grounds of age, sex, race religious or place of residence. Special benefits exist so that children from low income families have equal opportunities to study and to education; these include boarding schools.

b) The principle of establishing links between work and study: This is the unity of theory and practice, with the aim of creating an awareness of being a producer, a creator in children and young people, by eliminating the prejudices that derive from the division between manual and intellectual labour.

c) The principle of the democratic participation of society in the task of education: This recognises that society is a huge school and education is a process that lasts a lifetime. It ensures that all grassroot, social and other non-governmental organisations participate in education, in designing educational strategies, in supervising education and in taking decisions about it, and that this participation is by all levels of society.

d) The principle of coeducation and of schools open to diversity: Guarantees that men and women have access to educational centres in any of the subject areas and professions which the aforementioned system offers. There are no distinctions made nor discrimination practiced on the grounds of skin colour, family income, the political ideas or opinion of the person being educated or of his or her relatives, etc.

e) Gender approach This ensures the elementary right of girls and women to have access to the educational system, given that the mother’s educational level is important for the education of her children.

f) The Principle of Differentiated Education and Assimilation into Public Schools: The attention given is tailored to the needs and potentialities of each person.

g) The Principle of Free Education: Education at all levels is free.

2.- The New Educational Revolution.

Even though Cuba has made enormous progress in making possible the human right to education, everything that we are planning and doing today will imply radical changes, the results of which will be seen in 10 years time. Moreover, given that these changes are all part of the revolutionary process, they will bear the solidarity-filled, altruistic, internationalist seal stamped on them by a society that engenders high values and a humanist ethics.

a) The Universalisation of Higher Education
Higher education in Cuba has undergone transformations so that it may serve the population’s interests. At this level the results of scientific research have increased as have post graduate studies.

In the last few months, there has been a far-reaching revolution at this level of education, bringing the universities ever closer to each and every Cuban. Every municipality in the country now has university classrooms, in which a growing number of subjects is taught. The municipalisation of higher education has allowed us to increase registration to 300,000 students who study on
732 campuses. This has provided new opportunities for any young person or adult to take university courses.

b) The University of the Future: The Digital City.

The University of Information Sciences, a new university which brings the number of institutions of higher education in the country to 46, has been given the task of educating professional to have a high level of scientific and technological knowledge. It is thought of as providing support for increasing the use of computers in the country, for producing software and for industrial services.

Currently there are 4,000 scholarship students registered. The new university has a faculty of more than 300 highly qualified instructors, who were recruited from 27 of the other universities.

The projected capacity of this Digital City is 10,000, with 2,000 students registering every year.

c) A Qualitative Leap in Primary Education

A programme has been put in place in Cuba to ensure than there are no more than 20 pupils per classroom. This is so we may be able to offer differentiated education, the foundation for the qualitative leap we envisage for Cuban schools.

This goal has been made possible through the repair of existing schools and building of new ones; the prioritization of university training of primary and early childhood education teachers; the creation of 30 pre-university vocational colleges for teacher training around the country; intensive training of new teachers; the introduction of audiovisual technology in all classrooms; and the introduction of computer instruction beginning at the early childhood education level. All of the country's schools are now equipped with one television per classroom and a VCR for every 100 students, while there are 24,000 computers distributed among the primary schools.