ARTICLE - CUBA - 115 NEW HAITAN DOCTORS

115 HAITIAN MEDICAL GRADUATES IN CUBA WANT TO RETURN TO HAITI
(Defend Haiti) - By Claude Bernard Sérant

SANTIAGO DE CUBA - 115 Haitian students from the Aristide Foundation who studied medicine in Cuba graduated last month and will return to Haiti to begin their practices.

" 2 / 3 comes from the Aristide Foundation for Democracy in Haiti," said the head of the Haitian-Cuban Cooperation Department in the Office of the Minister of Health, Margaret O. Sanon.

"Worried and confused, they had filed an application urging the Haitian authorities of health in 2005 to continue their studies already begun at the University of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy", she further said. These new graduates are part of the seventh promotion called "Promotion Aesculapius 2005-2011" trained in Santiago de Cuba.

Since 1999, the start of the cooperation between Haiti and Cuba to the present, about 736 general practitioners have graduated, informed Ms. Sanon. 143 of them were appointed by the Ministry of Public Health to serve the Haitian people in public health facilities.

In the view of Ms. Sanon, "we abandoned these resources because there was no planning; a state policy that was really set up to absorb the volume of doctors trained in Cuba."

Newly graduated, Dr. Mariline Laguerre, a native of Les Cayes, showed her concern saying, "there is no finer investment in Haitian youth for the Haitian government than to send us to study in Cuba. But this investment is lost when the ground is not prepared to accommodate this many graduates. In fact, our seniors stay there and do nothing, they have no one to supervise, to guide them. When there is no follow-up, our skills are dispersed, yet Haiti needs physicians."

The graduates are willing to serve in Haiti said Dr. Mariline, who said she was ready to take her work to relieve the patients in the remotest corners of the country. Confident, she aspires to work for the public for some time to gain experience. Later, she would like to specialize in neurosurgery.

Another new graduate, Dr. Raoul Adila Junior, opined; "I think it is time for the Haitian government to facilitate young Haitian doctors to be able to specialize, knowing that the majority of them are generalists."