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ELAM Students and Graduates Send Greetings to Fidel Castro

CUBA, November 16, 2009. Students and graduates from the Havana-based Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) sent greetings on Sunday to the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, who conceived the idea of this educational center founded on November 15, 1999.

During the ceremony to mark the tenth anniversary of the institution, youths from several nations thanked Fidel for this lesson of humanism and symbolically awarded him a “Nobel Prize of Hope”.

Public Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer, who gave the closing speech of the ceremony, said that ELAM is the materialization of Fidel’s dreams and of his ideas about human beings and the world, the principles upon which a true Revolution is founded.

The high-ranking official congratulated and recognized the work of the school’s faculty who, he said, have trained men and women with a high sense of responsibility toward human beings and a deep love for their countries.

“This is a small contribution of our country to the peoples’ development,” Balaguer noted and highlighted the quality of the human and scientific training of the youths. He added that 36% of the more than 7,000 graduates from ELAM are currently taking post-graduate courses in Cuba.

“This school is an example of the future of Our Americas, a dignified future, an expression of internationalism and patriotism,” the Cuban Public Health Minister pointed out.

“In 50 years of Revolution, Cuba has graduated 104,000 doctors, including almost 12,000 from other nations. In the 2005-2009 period alone, the number of graduates reached more than 20,000, including more than 7,000 from ELAM,” he recalled.

On behalf of the students, Alihuen Antileo, from the Mapuche ethnic group and president of ELAM’s Board of Students, said: “We, who were once denied the right to study medicine in our own countries, are being trained as doctors, scientists and humanists, with the conviction that the world must be changed.”

“We must fight poverty as it is the root of unhealthiness, injustice, crime and genocide,” she stressed.

During the ceremony, diplomas and recognition awards were granted to Fidel Castro, Cuban President Raul Castro, Jose Ramon Balaguer, Jose Miyar Barrueco and the founding rector of ELAM, Dr. Juan Carrizo. (Cubaminrex- ACN)

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