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Cuban Professor and Researcher Gustavo Kouri Buried in Havana on Friday.

CUBA, May 6, 2011.- Cuban government and Communist Party leaders, relatives, friends, students and co-workers attended on Friday the burial of Professor and Researcher of Merit Gustavo Kouri at the capital’s Colon Cemetery.

Also present in the interment were Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon; Jose Ramon Balaguer, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party; and Public Health Minister Roberto Morales, among other personalities.

In his words to pay his last respects to this man of sciences, Dr. Jorge Gonzalez, rector of Havana’s University of Medical Sciences, highlighted the life and work of Kouri, considered an expert in the struggle against tropical diseases.

Kouri, who was the director-founder of Havana’s “Pedro Kouri” Tropical Medicine Institute for over three decades, died on Thursday in this capital, at the age of 75.

He is the author of over 200 publications and two books, being the dengue disease the center of his work and research.

He received prizes and social and scientific acknowledgements and medals, among them those of Labor Hero of the Republic of Cuba, conferred by the Council of State, and the Carlos J. Finlay Order, as well as other national and international awards, being, among the latter, the “Pontificium Concilium Pro Pastoral Valetudinis Cura” Medal, given by the Vatican. (Cubaminrex-Cuban News Agency)