Under Fidel Castro’s direction, Cuba has become a “medical superpower,” setting new standards for global solidarity in the interests of human health.
The Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana, founded in 1999, has trained more than 28,500 doctors from 103 countries, free of charge, including medical students from the United States since 1999. So far, 170 doctors from the United States have graduated through the project.
Dr David Floyd, a graduate of the class of 2016/17 who studied in Cuba for seven years, thanked the Cuban leadership, the Cuban people, the teachers and workers of this noble project, an example of integration between peoples for a more humane world. “For me it has been a wonderful experience. I am impressed by the link between study and work, unlike training in the United States and other countries.”
Dr Floyd finished his curriculum at the Salvador Allende Faculty of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana, an institution from which 52 foreign doctors have graduated, 25 of them from the United States.
David Floyd, father of the recently graduated doctor, conveyed his eternal gratitude and said he was very impressed, pleased and honoured because his son is a doctor trained in Cuba under ethical and moral principles, with a humanist conception.
At present the ELAM project has an enrolment of 4,969 students from 112 countries in the twenty-one faculties of the country’s medical science universities, of whom 83 are from the United States.
