During the day before the XVII Latin American Congress of Social Medicine and Collective Health, in this capital, graduates of that institution talked with its rector, Yoandra Muro, who heads a delegation from the island and who will present its experience in the sector at the event.

We were trained in praxis, the sense of work from the first moment and the contact with patients and communities.

Fidel dreamed up the ELAM to educate young Latin Americans who had no way to do it and lived in places where doctors never went. He should have a Nobel Prize in Public Health for the impact of his ideas, said Lucía Coronel, a member of the first graduating class of that university.

There we were taught that humanity and love for others is what gives meaning to our profession. We are for Cuba, as that country was for us. We are still willing to do our bit to build a better world, he added.

Chilean Andrés Varela said that the example of the largest of the Antilles and the possibility of knowing it marked the lives of many.

Cuba does not give what it can spare but shares what it has. We will always be indebted to that nation. That experience and way of looking at health is not to be found in any book, he said.

Meanwhile, Emilce Piazza, from Argentina, emphasized that ELAM graduates are the doctors of science and conscience that Fidel Castro dreamed of.

In turn, Muro stressed that the School was part of the Commander-in-Chief’s dream of taking health professionals to all parts of the world and creating a Latin American Great Homeland.

It is a great and extremely genuine work. ELAM graduates are different because they are the result of the history of their people of origin and of Cuba’s resistance, he said.

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