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Pakistan, Cuba to Collaborate in Higher Education Islamabad: 31st , August, 2006 Pakistan and Cuba plan to enhance links in higher education, particularly in the field of biotechnology. This possibility was discussed by Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, Federal Minister/ Chairman Higher Education Commission during his meeting with Mr. Gustavo Machin Gomez, Cuban Ambassador to Pakistan at the HEC Secretariat today. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, appreciating the Cuban gesture of awarding Pakistan 1000 scholarships for studies in medicine, proposed a joint programme for the establishment of a Centre of Excellence in Biotechnology in Pakistan, which would be set up by HEC with Cuban technical expertise. The proposed post graduate centre would have at least 100 PhD faculty members and over 1000 students at its completion, with at least top 20 Cuban scientists , each working for at least a year. Special emphasis would be given to linkages with industry. Cuba’s technical expertise , specially in biotechnology, could have its impact felt right across the Islamic world as scientists from 57 COMSTECH countries would be able to train and conduct research at the new Center, through COMSTECH. Further cooperation was possible through establishment of linkages between existing institutions in Pakistan and Cuba in the field of biotechnology, said Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman. He identified National Institute of Biology and Genetic Engineering (NIBGE), Faisalabad, Centre for Applied Molecular Biology (CAMB) Lahore and Dr.Panjwani Centre for Molecular Medicine (PCMM) Karachi as possible centres and requested the Cuban ambassador to identify partner centres in his country. The linkage would include exchange of scientists, conduct of joint research at doctorate and post doctorate level and linkages between industries. Ambassador Gomez expressed his pleasure and willingness for the suggested collaboration and revealed that the area of biotechnology was one in which Cuba excelled, including the field of vaccines development and production, and creation of new pharmaceuticals. “The best investment a country can make is investment in education,” said the Ambassador,” Cuba made such an investment over 40 years ago, and now we are reaping the harvest,” he added. It was further proposed that the programme to train 1000 students in study of medicine may be extended for specialization at PhD level in Biotechnology for a few hundred of these students from leading Cuban universities. At present over 22,000 foreign students are studying in Cuba. http://hec.gov.pk/MediaPublication/Press_Releases/2006/August/August%2031st.htmThis was posted August, 2006, and followed by a few worthwhile short articles on Cuba and medicine: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2486826From another source, a reminder of Cuba's work in Pakistan following their horrendous earthquake:  President Fidel Castro has offered, in a letter addressed to the President of Pakistan and made public by officials in Havana, to send 200 doctors to Pakistan in order to help treat the victims of the earthquake. Some 2,260 Cuban health brigadistas, more than 1,400 of them doctors, are in the area of Kashmir, where they have attended to more than 200,000 patients and saved hundreds of people in imminent danger of dying. <51> <52> <53>
More than 1,300,442 patients have been assisted (63,0592 women, 48.5%); and more than 12,406 surgical operations have been performed in 30 mobile field hospitals. <54> The fully equipped Cuban Field Hospitals will be handed over to the Pakistani government. <55> The Cuban Government has provided 234.5 tons of medicines and disposable materials, and 275.7 tons of most leading-edge equipment. More than 300 students of medicine have taken courses in the Cuban Field Hospitals. The Cuban Government has decided to offer a wide and free medicine scholarships program for 1,000 young Pakistanis from rural communities. <56>
The first Cuban medical team was in Pakistan on October 14, six days after the earthquake, the fast acceptance of the aid was a surprise due to the close relation of Pakistan and the US; the two countries have not even exchanged Ambassadors at that time. The leading Pakistani newspaper Dawn quoted President Musharraf as saying that "one of the most heart-warming letters of support" following the earthquake was from Fidel Castro. In his letter, Castro said that it was difficult for him to rest when thousands of Pakistanis were spending their days in pain, awaiting surgery. <57>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_response_to_the_2005_Kashmir_earthquakeLastly, you may find this article enormously informative, or not! Cuban Doctors in Pakistan: Why Cuba Still Inspires
by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
~snip~
For all of the talk of Cuba being wedded to the failed communist experiment and the obsolete ideals of the Cold War period, it is mainstream America that still uses the language that was commonplace at the height of the superpower conflict. Cubans who come over to Miami are “defectors” and are treated as liberated prisoners of war by the exile community. Just how preposterous such portrayals actually are is reflected in the fact that Cuba’s biggest income-earning industry is tourism—millions of Europeans, Asians, and Africans (and even a fair share of Americans) visit the island every year, none of whom are considered by their own governments to be “spies” or possible “defectors.”
Cubans’ remarkable commitment to internationalism is also down-played globally due to the smear campaign that Washington and the U.S. dominated corporate media spearheads. Cuba has sent its troops around the world in support of numerous liberation struggles, including many in Southern Africa and Asia. Perhaps even more significantly, Cuban doctors are found in the remotest of areas worldwide, serving populations that may never have seen doctors before. The most recent such episode was in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Pakistan’s mountainous region in October 2005. The Bush administration has consistently referred to Pakistan as a “front-line state” in the post-September 11 period, and one would think that the earthquake would have presented an opportunity to reward the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf for its extremely unpopular support for the “war on terror.” But it was at this time of great suffering of the Pakistani people that imperialism’s hollow slogans of neoliberal internationalism were exposed, while the virtues of socialist internationalism were plain for all to see.
Over 2,500 Cuban doctors lived and worked in the earthquake-hit zones for six months after arriving in late October 2005. For many of these doctors, this was the first time that they had been exposed to any kind of winter, let alone a relatively harsh one in an area with very little in the way of protection, particularly after the devastation of the earthquake. The Cubans developed intimate relationships with thousands of those they treated, even though they were very careful not to engage in too many discussions and debates on politics, particularly relating to the discontent that is rife against the army’s domination of public life.
For many Pakistanis, the Cuban experience was a revelation. In the first instance, there was a stark sense of disbelief that these individuals came to Pakistan of their own free will and that they stayed well beyond the point that most global relief efforts had wound down. Pakistanis found it very hard to understand the picture that the Cubans painted of the dynamics of Cuban society. They could not relate to the idea that the majority of Cubans believed in and were committed to a profound sense of social equality, especially when they compared this to the deep-rooted hierarchies that permeate Pakistani society. Perhaps more unbelievable was the notion that the state actually promoted this shared solidarity—Pakistanis know the state to be committed only to undermining such processes.
The Cubans too found many aspects of what they saw around them to be somewhat unbelievable, perhaps most of all that so many of their patients were actually seeing a medical doctor for the first time in their lives. The Cubans also distinguished themselves from the rest of the relief effort by either living in tents under the same conditions as those displaced by the earthquake, or when in Islamabad, renting rooms at the most modest hotels that they could find. This was in stark contrast to the staff of most of the international aid agencies, who not only contributed to the creation of an extremely harmful and artificial parallel economy in the earthquake areas by paying for everything in foreign exchange and doling out huge amounts of money to meet their basic “subsistence” needs, but who also tended to spend an enormous amount of time in five star hotels in Islamabad and other big cities. As with all major donor funded operations, a healthy chunk of the monies committed to earthquake relief was channeled toward the overhead costs of the relief teams themselves. Not so with the Cubans who were provided a fairly meager allowance even by Pakistani standards and shopped and ate in the working-class areas of Islamabad (hidden as they are from view by a very sinister planning process), interacting extensively with ordinary people in these areas in a spirit of great camaraderie.
The Cubans have since committed to providing training services to Pakistani doctors for free, admitting Pakistani medical students to universities in Cuba, and continuing to send Cuban doctors to Pakistan to work in under-serviced areas, a practice that was much more common when the socialist bloc still existed, but is now slowly being experimented with again in friendly Latin American countries. In some cases, such as those of Venezuela and Bolivia, the Cubans are receiving cheap oil and gas in return for their medical expertise, but in the Pakistani case, the Cuban offer of assistance was made (and accepted) without demand for something in return. There has been talk of a broader preferential trade agreement between the two countries, although there has been no explicit progress on this initiative as yet, ostensibly because General Musharraf would rather not annoy his more prized ally ninety miles to the north of the little island.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pakistanis who came into regular contact with the Cubans were kept under strict watch. In cases where there was a suspicion that the interaction had moved beyond basic conversation about health-related issues, and particularly when the Cubans met local political activists with even a slightly leftward tilt, the intelligence agencies wasted no time in asserting themselves. A number of people were questioned about their exchanges with the Cubans and implicitly warned not to meet them again. Pakistan has long been a bulwark against communism—and is now ostensibly a bulwark against terrorism—hence the tolerance for any “communist” influence is virtual nil. It is a testament to the nature of the Pakistani state that it constantly complained about its lack of capacity in dealing with the earthquake, particularly in terms of a shortage of civil servants, and yet still had enough state functionaries to collect intelligence on the activities of a team of Cuban (read: communist) doctors who were arguably the most effective of the many foreign relief teams that came to Pakistan after the earthquake. Like its patron the United States, the Pakistani state clearly has not moved beyond the hang- ups of the Cold War, while, to their credit, the Cubans avoided any controversy and dedicated themselves totally to their work, making sure to engage publicly only on matters related to their medical tasks. http://www.monthlyreview.org/1106akhtar.htm |
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