CUBA, Jan 19, 2010. - While the Spanish newspaper El País fails to mention the Cuban help to Haiti, other media outlets highlight it like the Australian daily ‘The Age’ and the online publication ‘Rebelión’. The Age published a letter signed by Joan Coxsedgela, president of the Melbourne-based Cuba-Australia Friendship Society that refers to the work of the Cuban doctors, nurses and health technicians in an improvised hospital in Port-au-Prince. The letter says more aid from Havana is on the way to the devastated Caribbean nation and recalls that since 1989 Cuba has been providing free medical assistance to the poor Haitians. Coxsedgela points out that 35,000 Cuban doctors are collaborating in 78 countries, and even so, the United States included that nation in a list of terror-sponsor countries. On related news, Pascual Serrano, journalists and director of the website Rebelión, criticized El País for failing to mention the Cuban assistance to Haiti on its reports on the issue, Granma reported. On its print edition of January 15, El País named 23 nations that are helping Haiti plus the United Nations, but it left out Cuba. The Spanish newspaper did not mention either that immediately after the powerful quake shook Haiti, Cuban health experts who where already working on collaboration programs in that county set up two emergency hospitals and without delay another group of doctors was sent over from Havana with medicines and medical equipments. Much less it mentions that young Haitians are studying Cuba, most of them medicine and other related courses. At present, 512 Cubans are collaborating in Haiti, 410 of them in health programs and the rest in other sectors like education, production and services. Other 38 young Haitians who were doing their medical internship in Santiago de Cuba traveled to their country land to help out and other 100 will join them soon. (Cubaminrex - acn) |