Doctors fault plan to import health workers from Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

3. Cuba-trained doctors making difference around the world

Thousands of students, including one from Canada, graduate each year from the ELAM school, and go on to provide care in under-serviced areas.

By CATHERINE PORTER
Feature Writer
Sat., June 2, 2012

SANTA CLARA, CUBA—Every morning, on the edge of town, you can witness a spectacular migration. Hundreds of students in white lab coats pour from a squat university building on to the street, around the line of horse-drawn wagons, and into nearby hospitals.

You can play a game, watching from your perch beneath a flowering flamboyant tree: where do you think the guy with dreadlocks is from? What about the girl with a hijab? Some have telltale signs — an Argentinean or Angolan flag stitched over their medical uniforms.

They are international students at the world’s largest medical school, the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina — ELAM.

To put the school’s size in perspective: the University of Toronto has 850 medical students and Harvard University has 735. ELAM has twelve times more students than those two schools combined: 19,550. And, despite being a poor country, every single one of those students is on full scholarship.

More:
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2012/06/02/cubatrained_doctors_making_difference_around_the_world.html