Cuban doctors deserve to be honored

Backpacks slung on their shoulders, they blaze through jungles, climb mountains, traverse deserts, cross rivers and everything else that has to be crossed to reach the homeless and until they’ve reached those who have never seen a doctor – even those who die of “old age” or because “God wanted it that way.”

With their weapons of mass destruction they devastate germs and viruses, showing that it is not the will of God, but poverty and marginalization, that kills. To see these doctors there is no need for money. It is why the dispossessed love them, and for that very reason they are hated by “doctors”.

Risking their lives to save lives no matter where, they take on Ebola in Africa, dysentery in Guatemala, the Zika in Cuba, earthquakes in Pakistan, the misery of Brazil, the neglect of Ecuador, fevers of the Sahara or the remoteness of Timor.

They earn very little, much less than what they deserve, but account for 80 percent of the income of the nation. When they began working in Venezuela, they created the light, and since their arrival in the forests and fields of Brazil the loaves and chickens have been multiplied.

There is no war without casualties and, although their are many in their history, few remember their names. Those who bet their own lives to save others, at the very minimum, deserve to live in the memory of the rest; it’s the least we can offer them.

Cuba should erect a monument where the names of all the fallen fighting diseases should be engraved. And this could be constructed with stones brought from all the countries where they have been. This can be done as an offering of the humanity that they have saved.

Those who support the initiative of Cartas desde Cuba can write to Minister Roberto Morales at apoblacion@infomed.sld.cu, of the Ministry of Public Health, by sending a copy of this notice or with your own words in favor of this monument.

(From Cartas desde Cuba)

[Photo at top of brigade of Cuban doctors by Raquel Pérez Díaz.]