U.S. med students get free training in Cuba

There’s a bright ray of hope for students in the United States who want to become doctors. And it’s shining in socialist Cuba.

Beginning in 2001 students from the U.S. began studying in Havana for free at the Latin American School of Medicine (LASM). Originally 500 students were offered scholarships annually. This has been increased to 1,000. The only condition is that the students make a commitment to serve poor communities in the U.S. after receiving their medical licenses.

This is in stark contrast to the U.S. where, confronted with a capitalist educational system rife with institutional oppression and massive economic barriers, poor working class and/or students of color are virtually excluded from pursuing medical and most other degrees. Entrance exam fees and tests alone can be thousands of dollars. Poor students in the U.S. wanting to obtain an M.D. are often forced to either go deep in debt through high-interest loans and/or rely on loved ones who are also facing economic disasters—such as layoffs, foreclosures and bankruptcy.

More than 3,400 students from 23 countries, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, are already at the Latin America School of Medicine, all studying for free. The school was established in the wake of the terrible hurricanes that caused many deaths and extensive damage in Central America in 1997.

Most of the U.S. students who have either graduated from the LASM or are now in the medical program are people of color and/or women. In U.S. medical schools it’s just the reverse.

Chinere Knight and Ese Agari of Detroit began their studies at the LASM in Havana in the fall of 2007.

“It showed you that, yes, we are in America and we have all these resources, but once you go through the bureaucracy and you go through the prejudice and the bias, you might not get the assistance that you should,” Knight told the Michigan Citizen, a Black news weekly in Detroit that published a feature article on these students in August 2007.

Detroit City Council member JoAnn Watson helped facilitate Knight’s and Agari’s scholarship process, logistics and fundraising with many Cuba supporters in Detroit. The Rev. Dr. Lucius Walker Jr. spoke to the Detroit City Council about the medical school program in December 2006.

Walker, director of the Inter-Religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) and founder of Pastors for Peace, is the keynote speaker for this year’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rally in Detroit.

Pastors for Peace administers the scholarship process for the Cuban medical school program.

A December 2004 New England Journal of Medicine article, “Affirmative Action, Cuban Style,” cited health indicators in Cuba being “on par with those in the most developed nations.”

According to the World Health Organization, Cuba has twice as many physicians per capita as the U.S. and the infant mortality rate is less than most cities in the U.S.

Cuba has sent more than 60,000 medical personnel to countries on every continent, exceeding even the World Health Organization, since its first internationalist brigade of 56 medical helpers went to Algeria in May 1963.

But no Cuban doctors are allowed in the U.S.

Despite a dire need for health care services in this country, due to the blockade against Cuba by the U.S., Cuban health care professionals are denied entry. The effect of this criminal blockade was starkly exposed during Hurricane Katrina when Cuban medical personnel, who have much experience in dealing with tropical storms, were mobilized and ready to assist those devastated by the hurricane. Both they and Venezuelan medical personnel were refused entry by the U.S. even as mostly poor Black people were left to languish and die, many from a lack of basic medical equipment or untreated ailments.

Students like Agari and Knight are intent on remedying this situation by studying in Cuba and then returning to their communities. They see hope for humanity in revolutionary Cuba, where becoming a doctor is motivated by humanitarian internationalism, not profit.

“If we do want to improve our level of health and eradicate diabetes and hypertension, then we need to figure out some alternative way to do it. I think Cuba’s medical system offers that,” Knight told the Citizen.

She added, “You have an obligation to work, when you come back to the U.S., in an underrepresented community, where there’s need. And you dedicate yourself to that for your entire career. I said, that’s not a problem, I’d do that anyway.”

For more information on the Jan. 21 event, see www.mlkdetroit.org, call 313- 383-6767 or email [email protected]. For information on the Cuban medical school program, see www.ifconews.org.