Cuba has a wide healthcare network that ensures and provides universal and free medical care to its entire population, even under the conditions of a country facing an intensified economic, commercial and financial blockade successive US governments has maintained for 63 years, he stressed.

Portal Miranda recalled that at the triumph of the Revolution, in 1959, there were only six thousand doctors on the island, half of whom emigrated, and pointed out that at present the country has 102 thousand doctors and trains not only these, but also dentists, nurses and technologists who guarantee the full functioning of the health system.

He also pointed out that today more than 26,000 Cuban health collaborators provide their services in 59 countries, and that during the most critical stage of the scourge of the Covid-19 pandemic, 58 medical teams left the island to provide support in 42 countries.

The Cuban Minister of Health also remarked that his country developed and produced five vaccine candidates against Covid-19, three of which became internationally-recognized vaccines, and said that more than 98 percent of the island’s population is already fully vaccinated and more than 85 percent have booster doses.

In another part of his presentation, Portal Miranda referred to the potential of the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos (CSMC), both in the healthcare area and in the academic and teaching areas, whose income, he said, is fully invested in the development of the national health system.

All the work of the CSMC is based on professionalism, ethics, humanism and the commitment of the healthcare workers to life, he assured.

The meeting with the Cuban minister was attended by officials from the national health portfolio, businessmen, specialists and Vietnamese doctors trained in Cuba, as well as CSMC’s representative here, Roberto Baños.

mh/mpm