Address
by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz at the ceremony held in celebration of
the 53rd anniversary of the attacks on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel
de Céspedes barracks AT THE “HOMELAND SQUARE” OF Bayamo, Granma, July 26, 2006.
(Stenography Department - Council of State)
Dear fellow Cubans from Granma and across Cuba:
Between 28 and
There’s no need for me to overdo it, because the
things I’m referring to here are difficult to believe.
First offered to a mere 18 pupils in a primary school
in Pilón –better to say, a little school in Pilón--, equipped with a single
computer powered by solar energy, the Introductory Computer Sciences Course,
four years after its inception, benefits 74 374 primary school students who now
have access to 2 021 computers.
The province's
primary and secondary education audiovisual programs already have 7 460
television sets, 3 581 VCRs and 5 054 computers at their disposal. Four hundred
and eighty five schools that had no electricity are now powered by photovoltaic cells
--the so-called solar panels. Those
schools do not need to invest a single cent in fuel in order to have the
electricity they require to operate these equipment or even to have light; 167 of these schools have an enrollment
of less than 5 pupils, and 24 have only one pupil and a teacher. These schools
embody the principle that no child ought to be deprived of schooling, no matter
how remote their place of residence.
The Comprehensive Upgrading Course for Young People
(SHOUTS FROM THE AUDIENCE) was inaugurated --that was four years ago here, in
Granma, in the city of Manzanillo, on that evening-- with an enrollment of 12
124 students. Today, some 17 930 students are enrolled. A total of 17 950 young
people who have completed these courses have begun university studies.
Including these, Granma can report the figure of 47 409 students enrolled in
higher education, three times the number for the entire country at the time the
Revolution triumphed. Enrollment in the 39 university degree programs offered
has increased considerably thanks to a program aimed at making higher education
accessible to everyone, which has opened 54 new chapters across all of the
province's municipalities (APPLAUSE).
At the time, Granma’s unemployment rate was 10.7 %;
today, it has dropped to 1.6 % (APLAUSE). I remember that sometime before that
date, we spoke about a 17 % unemployment rate in Granma, or at least in
Manzanillo. That figure was really
dramatic. Many factories were shut down
during the special period.
During those days, a Video Viewing Rooms Program was
also set in motion to take television programs to rural populations living in
isolated regions. Back then, the province had 171 such rooms. There were many, and we felt proud about
them. Today, there are 454 rooms, the
country's highest number. If we add up all visits paid to these rooms so far,
figures will show that they have been visited by the rural population more than
4 million times (APPLAUSE).
These facilities, in addition to offering
entertainment, have become centers where people learn and play chess –which is
good to develop the brain muscles—(LAUGHTER), take courses on sanitary issues
and participate in other important social activities. Three hundred and sixty
four of these rooms have been especially equipped and staffed to offer
rehabilitation services to the community (Applause). I remember the day when we first came across
that idea. If they were already in
place, if their construction was solid, if they had electricity, all we needed
to do was to find a place to install there the equipment that was needed by so
many people who were unable to come down from the mountains, or move from a
far-off place to Media Luna or Niquero
or Pilón to go to a polyclinic where they could receive the adequate
treatment for any kind of injury or find a solution to any of their needs,
which are many more that anyone can
imagine. Ten new Video Viewing Rooms are
currently being set up.
The Visual Arts Teaching Program was opened at the
“Carlos Enríquez” Academy, in a refurbished and expanded building in
Manzanillo. Bayamo's “Oswaldo Guayasamín” Academy, a newly inaugurated
institution, has joined the program. Both institutions have graduated 83
students, and their current combined enrollment amounts to 171 students (Applause).
At the time, the refurbishing of the Manzanillo
Theatre, which had been shut down for thirty years, was still underway. The
repair process has been completed and over 120 000 theatre-goers have enjoyed
580 shows which have been staged there.
Programs for the creation of concert bands gained
momentum and a school for training in the specialty, one of a kind in
In keeping with these ideas, prison inmates were also
offered access to upgrading courses. Of these, 243 have reached 12th
grade of education and 140 have completed courses offered by the Youth Computer
Clubs (Applause), instead of
resorting to violence and drugs, with which no one could be re-educated, or,
better to say, educated, because, as a rule, those persons end up in prison
because they never received proper education.
Let us all educate, and we will see how the numbers of those who go to
prison will be reduced (SHOUTS OF “LONG LIVE FIDEL!”).
There are already 43 Youth Computer Clubs in the
province equipped with a total of 524 computers. To date, 59 473 students have
completed courses in these (APPLAUSE). Seven new Clubs will be built as part of
this program (SHOUTS OF “LONG LIVE!”).
Over this period of time, 614 works as part of the
Battle of Ideas and four other major constructions of great social significance
have been completed in Granma.
The latter are:
The Manzanillo Aqueduct: Three hundred and fifty kilometers of water mains
and more than
Bayamo's
We have been blockaded, threatened for more than
fifty years, and we can say to our petty neighbors to the North: “Show me
single photo, a single map of a country or of a province where there’s
something comparable to this which you, citizens from Granma, have accomplished
in four years” (SHOUTS OF “FIDEL! FIDEL!)
The city of
The 14.3-kilometer-long segment of the Veguitas -
Yara – Manzanillo road, once in critical condition, was repaired and re-opened.
The repair of the Dátil - Universidad segment is currently underway.
More than 14 229 students have benefited from the
reconstruction of 27 schools.
Construction work in 8 polyclinics which offer
services to 241 596 inhabitants has been completed and work in 21 others which
offer top quality services to the rest of the province's population
continues. Thirteen of these will be
completed within the next 4 months; the 8 remaining polyclinics will be ready
within 10 months, maximum (Applause).
The province has also received numerous pieces of
high-tech medical equipment which have contributed to improve the quality of
medical services.
Like the other 165 which have been completed
elsewhere in the country, the 8 polyclinics built in Granma offer new
ultrasound, thrombolysis, traumatology, endoscopy --without which it is
impossible to identify many of the problems affecting the digestive tract,
although this technique is used also for other purposes. It is a whole new field-- and allergy
laboratory services. How many persons
suffering from asthma, just to mention an example, live in any of our
provinces? Our country is an island,
characterized by high humidity levels and a heavy incidence of asthma; so it
happens in
I can assure you that during the times of the Indian
Hatuey, nobody died from a car accident (LAUGHTER). And there are still some people who die
because they get killed, like that truck driver who not long ago, close to the
town of Guamá, was driving a truck down the South Highway without a license,
and who knows in what condition. The truck overturned and several men, women,
and children got killed. We saw that, we
received the news. It hurts to think
that this man was one of those –and I say one of those, not to say one of so
many—irresponsible persons!
All of you are listening –when you can—to what is
going on in Cartagenas, and more than once you must have heard the news about
Eddy Martin, who suffered a serious accident cause by a bus which ignored the
STOP signal. Was there any need for that
to happen? And, why? Maybe, as long as
our country improves its education, acquires more knowledge and becomes more
aware of this problem, we will be able to apply more rigorous rules. Maybe a more educated people will manage to
minimize those cases.
I am just telling you about some of these
things. Even if the day remains as
cloudy as it’s been, the whole time of this ceremony would not be enough for me to explain all that can
be done to combat crime, and more than that, to prevent the proliferation of
delinquents in our country, and what are the cultural, educational, and even
genetic phenomena associated with crime, despite the need for discipline by
every people, every nation, and the society as a whole.
The day when there are truly just societies in the world
–and that day is getting closer, because there is no other choice--, that day,
we could make a very rational use of all the strength derived from education to
create values and, specially, to convey values.
That is the task of teachers, educators, professors, from primary
education until they are one hundred and odds years-old. Because I believe that there are, who knows
how many, thousands of citizens in this country, and that is understandable,
and there will be more and more who
could even go beyond the age of one hundred years. But our petty neighbor to the North should
not be afraid; I was not thinking about being performing my duties at that age
(SHOUTS FROM THE AUDIENCE). Because,
after all, I do not perform such duties right now because of my own will; I
never struggled for that. Yes, I will
struggle my whole life, until the very last second of my existence, as long as
I am in full control of my own senses, to do something good, something useful,
because we, revolutionaries, have all learned to be better every new year of
our lives (SHOUTS OF “LONG LIVE FIDEL!”), and human beings are ennobled when
they do something for others (SHOUTS OF “LONG LIVE JULY 26!”)
Today, the
polyclinics offer services and make use of technologies which four years ago
only hospitals had.
That is why several intensive care units were put up
in those municipalities where there were no hospitals. At this moment there are 118 municipalities
which have them, and we will continue to study the whole situation because
wherever there is a polyclinic, even when there is also a hospital, it could be
convenient to expand those services. We
might be speaking about a bigger municipality.
In
How many are there in the municipality of “Diez de
Octubre”? That municipality has more
than 200 000 inhabitants. So is the case
for other cities. The city of
In the past, no one needed a telephone, no one needed
electricity. When the citizens of Bayamo
set the city on fire, the only thing they had was the telegraph, and I believe
it was through the telegraph that Carlos Manuel de Céspedes knew that an arrest
warrant had been issued against himself.
Electricity did not exist, there were only candle lights. I think even carbide was used as a source of
light. Well, back then everybody went to
bed earlier, there were no world championships, no Olympics or any of the like
which could keep the people awake up until
Ten surgery wards, 7 clinical laboratories, 5
intensive care units and sterilization equipment for general, pediatric and
maternal hospitals have been reopened previous to this date. Sixteen
opticians’, which cover all of the province's municipalities, have been fitted
with new equipment.
Of the 28 600 Cuban health professionals working in
71 different countries as part of internationalist missions, 2 232 are from
Granma (Applause). Because our country today has, by far, the
highest number of doctors per every inhabitant in the whole world. Unfortunately, it is so sad to know that
Sub-Saharan Africa, with almost 700 million inhabitants, has only 50 000
doctors, while Cuba, with 11.2 million inhabitants has more than 70 000, and in
our universities there are more than 20 000 students of medicine, not to speak
about the tens of thousands of students from the Third World, most of them from
Latin America, who are studying in Cuba.
The doctors of the
The province’s art school, which increases
considerably the number of students enrolled in art education, was concluded:
in 2000, there were only two art schools in the province, with a total of 202
students enrolled in the elementary level; today, there are 501 students from
several eastern and central provinces enrolled in the elementary and middle
levels of art education as well as in 16 music courses. In the next academic
year, middle level dance courses will begin to be offered.
The school for art instructors, with a capacity for
651 students, has been refurbished. So far, 385 art instructors have graduated,
and today they teach in 210 schools and offer artistic appreciation workshops
to more than 52 000 children. Four years
ago none of that existed here. But then
the Battle of Ideas began, and the first art instructors graduated on that day
when I elegantly fell down in Villa Clara (LAUGHTER). It will be two years since I fell. Tell me about it; I’ve had to go through a
lot of rehabilitation. I wonder what
would have happened to me without a rehabilitator who could make me walk and
use my arm, which doesn’t punch as hard as it used to. But I still have my left arm, which is a very
symbolic arm (LAUGHTER AND SHOUTS OF “LONG LIVE FIDEL!”).
The “Camilo Cienfuegos” Military Schools of Bayamo
and Manzanillo were built. Each of them has an enrollment of 300 students.
In the last four years, 3 151 young people have
graduated as social workers in the province (Shouts
from the audience). They have actively participated in important
revolutionary projects in Granma and across the country.
Granma has no need of any Yankee transition plan to
teach people how to read and write, vaccinate or care for the health of its
population. (People in the audience
shout: “No!”), because today we have what the US people do not have,
what tens of millions of Americans, more than 40 million, do not have. Let’s see what they will do with all of these
spectacular advances. And I have not
referred to any data as yet. Bear with
me and you will see (SHOUTS OF “LONG LIVE!”).
We will have to ask Mr. Bush and others who are
speaking about a transition plan, to come to Granma so that they could
understand what and education program, a health program, an art and culture
development program is all about (SHOUTS FROM THE AUDIENCE). They could go elsewhere in the country. We invite them to visit us (SHOUTS FROM THE
AUDIENCE).
Three years following the date when those indicators
were reported, in July
No sooner had the hurricane passed over the province
that the first aid materials arrived. That same day, 12 power generators,
dispatched to the province by
In the course of these months, the province has
received 215 331 zinc tiles,
102 175 cement boards, 1 461 tons of steel and 14 661
tons of cement. It has also received 25 233 mattresses and 3 800 television
sets to be delivered to the victims of the hurricane.
These materials have made it possible to repair 18
225 roofs which had been totally or partially destroyed, as well as 1 307
houses that had been completely destroyed.
I can assure you that this has been one of the greatest efforts ever
been made by the country; maybe we could have had more polyclinics refurbished
by now. Several thousands homes still
need to be re-constructed or repaired.
The province is also involved in a number of
strategic programs traced by the Revolution.
As part of the energy-saving revolution,
efforts have been devoted to install 7.9 megawatt emergency power generators,
5.2 megawatt rural sub-station groups, and batteries made up by 8 groups each
in Bayamo, which produce 30 megawatts of electricity. Granma's total capacity
at the moment is 43.1 megawatts. Today, the province’s total energy demand
oscillates between 86 and 89 megawatts of electricity. The civil works required
by the electrical installation in Manzanillo, designed to house 16 power
generators, has been completed. Once in operation, this installation shall
increase the generation capacity by 30 megawatts.
Also as part of the energy-saving revolution, 262 435
multi-purpose electric pressure cookers and an equal number of hot plates, rice
cookers and water heaters have been distributed to the same number of
households. Ninety seven per cent of homes with electricity use this type of
energy to cook, in a province where 93.5 % of households used to cook with
kerosene.
The province has the equipment needed to supply the
100 per cent of the households scheduled to receive these appliances during the
first stage of this process, that is to say, those homes that have the required
electrical infrastructure.
A program aimed at replacing decade-old, inefficient
refrigerators whose years of use had made them energy-guzzlers was recently
undertaken in Granma. To date, nearly
Hundreds of thousands of incandescent bulbs have been
replaced with energy-saving ones –and this process has not concluded.
A total of 114 957 makeshift fans (which consumed
high volumes of electricity) were replaced with efficient fans in the province.
A total of 3 800 television sets have also been
distributed to the population. Priority was given to those families whose homes
suffered damages as a result of hurricane Dennis.
Six food storage silos have been constructed and 18
others are currently being built, for a total capacity of nearly 50 000 tons.
We had none of them before. Those are
state-of-the-art refrigerated silos which are very economic and will be
equipped with their respective hammer mills.
Manzanillo’s Municipal Television Station went
on the air on
All municipalities in the country, or almost all of
them, depending on their geographical position, will have their own municipal
television station (APPLAUSE). Imagine
how useful these could be for education, in addition to entertainment and
information programs; and how much could this contribute to combat certain
problems. Yes, we already have tens of
those equipment. We are making an
analysis of each and every municipality where these equipment will be installed. The one in Manzanillo started to operate on
Surveys have confirmed the impact it has had on the
local population, 80 % of which prefers its shows, as they have community
content. It broadcasts 6 daily hours of programming, Monday to Friday –and of
course, it is logical that certain broadcasting times should be respected; so
is the case for the national information programs and others for different
purposes. A similar Television Station is being set up in Niquero: it should be
operational by mid August.
The Provincial Television Station is under
construction in the area surrounding the Plaza de
To take television signals to the most
out-of-the-way places in the province, 227 satellite television receivers have
been installed in schools, television viewing rooms, social clubs and clinics,
in areas where no signals can be received, and 137 have been installed in homes
in Cabo Cruz, an area that was severely damaged by hurricane Dennis.
The “Rubén Bravo” Computer Sciences Polytechnic
School has an enrollment of 1303 students.
Seventy eight per cent of the construction work has been completed and
the school is scheduled to be concluded by September this year.
Currently, 553 students from Granma are enrolled in
the University of Information Sciences (UCI) (Applause).
That is one of the best institutions that have ever existed; 553 students from
this province attend that university and have everything they need there: the best teaching aids, the best professors. It already has 8 000 students, and the figure
will increase to 10 000 by the next school year. Besides, mini-UCIs will be opened in every
province, so in addition to this university, we will perhaps have some tens of
chapters in other provinces of the country.
Those students worked for the Miracle Mission and
have accomplished several other tasks; they are talents who have been
displayed. No one can imagine how much this country will receive in return from
those institutions, which also become a very important source of revenues for a
country like
Next school year, a regional chapter of this
university will be opened in this province on an experimental basis to welcome
300 students from Guantánamo,
The opening of this regional chapter of the University
of Information Sciences and of two others in Ciego de Avila and Artemisa next
academic year, will open the doors of
higher education to 1 050 young people who will graduate from computer sciences
polytechnic institutes from across the country.
But the Revolution's colossal social projects are not
limited to the province of Granma, so dearly loved by all of us who landed and
fought for nearly two years in the mountains of this province, the winner of
this year's national emulation award, a real tribute to those who died on July
26, 1953 at the Moncada or in Bayamo, because Santiago and Bayamo were the two
cities targeted to start that Revolution (SHOUTS FROM THE AUDIENCE).
The first victorious battle was fought in this
province, the last offensive of the dictatorship was defeated here, its
military apparatus nearly collapsed in the Santo Domingo-Las Mercedes-Arroyones
triangle, alongside the course of the Yara river (Applause).
A few kilometers from the city of Bayamo, 180 men
laid siege to the town of Guisa and fought for 10 days against the enemy's best
operations troops, striking and crushing reinforcements, which were headed by
middle-sized and heavy tanks that, backed by aviation, tried in vain to prevent
us from taking Guisa (Shouts from the
audience).
The entire country is responding with growing
enthusiasm to these programs. Through their efforts for the 26th of July
emulation competition —comparable to those to which the extraordinary success
of Granma and its Party is owed—under the direction of their brilliant,
outstanding and respected leader Lázaro Expósito (Applause and shouts of "LONG LIVE!" and "Long live
the Party" and other slogans), the provinces of Camagüey, Villa
Clara and Havana City (Applause)
earned for themselves the mention of Outstanding Provinces. Pinar del
The progress we’ve made in the whole country is
attested to by unequivocal data:
In the first half of 2006, 51 633 children, 11 per
every one thousand inhabitants, were born in
Until 23 July of this year,
On
Today’s infant mortality rate of 5.6 per every one
thousand live births means that, for every one thousand children who are born
alive, 994 reach the first year of life.
In 1970, of every one thousand children born alive,
956 reached the age of five. In the last five years, 992 per every one thousand
children born alive reached the age of five.
To date, seven provinces —Matanzas, Villa Clara,
Cienfuegos, Havana City, Camagüey, Holguín and Granma —continue to report
infant mortality rates of five or less per every one thousand live births. The
lowest rates of 4.08 and 4.0 are reported by Holguín and Granma, respectively.
The infant mortality rate reported by
We could ask Little Bush (LAUGHTER) what is the
infant mortality rate in the capital of the
That City of
It is convenient to remember that, because they tell
lies and more lies, and each time we prove them wrong they shut up, but that
really is not enough. We will hammer
them with the truth.
It was with the truth that we made this Revolution;
it was with the truth that we gained victory; it is with the truth that the
Revolution has defended itself during almost 50 years (APPLAUSE AND SHOUTS OF
“LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION! LONG LIVE FIDEL!”).
In 1970, the infant mortality rate associated to
congenital malformations was 3.8 per every one thousand live births. There had
been 11 years since the Revolution had triumphed. Of course, back then there were not many
doctors; remember that there were 6 000 and they took away 3 000. There was only one medical university and
only one teaching hospital. In 2003,
that rate was 1.9 per every one thousand live births, half as much it was
before. In 2004, 1.7; in 2005, 1.5; and up until July 2006, it has been 1.3 per
every one thousand live births (Applause).
The
Of those children born with congenital malformations
this year, 44 were saved by cardiovascular surgical interventions and 35 by
neonatal surgical interventions.
Life expectancy at birth
In the years 1950 to 1955, life expectancy at birth
in
We are not the country with the highest life
expectancy rate as yet, but today our country’s rate is above the average rate
of developed countries. There is no
doubt we need “a transition”; this is just too much, this can not be tolerated
(APPLAUSE). It is an extremely cruel
violation of human rights. The fact that
today the life expectancy rate in our little and blockaded island is 1.2 years
above the average rate of developed countries is an unforgivable crime.
In 1970, life expectancy in
Currently,
Active screening for disabilities in
You will now listen to some serious issues. And you may wonder, aren’t these things which
are being said not serious? No, these are far more serious, these are issues
related to health.
In
A total of 366 864 physically disabled persons were
identified:
Mentally retarded: 140 489, which accounts for 38.2
%.
You know that there are more than 50 000 children in
special schools, that mental retardation is no dishonor to anyone, and in a
society like ours, mentally retarded children should go to school and get prepared so that their lives could be as
normal as possible. No one is to
blame. Parents perhaps are if, for
example, they fail to fully understand that during pregnancy, mothers-to-be
should not drink alcohol. Parents could
have some responsibility, but children have none. There is mild, moderate,
severe, and deep mental retardation.
Children suffering from the latter are much less.
92 506, or 25.2 %, have a physical and motor
disability.
46 455, or 12.6 %, are visually impaired.
23 620, or 6.4 %, have a hearing disability.
36 869, or 10.05 %, have a mental disability.
1 831, or 0.50 %, suffer from chronic kidney failure.
25 094, or 6.8 %, suffer from more than one
disability.
This study has allowed us to undertake a health
program for people with disabilities which has no parallel anywhere in the
world.
Active screening for ophthalmologic afflictions in
Pinar
until
No information has been released about this, because
this is a work in progress. I talked
about this at the MERCOSUR Conference, and I also did at the
All of the population aged 5 and over in Pinar del
Universe of population to be examined: 685 961
Population examined: 593 406
Per cent of the population examined: 86.5 –and still
we have to include here more than 13 %.
Diagnosed with cataracts: 42 753 patients, which
accounts for 6.24 % of the entire population.
This is an active screening, it is not a statistics
of patients who went to see the doctor, which has been the usual practice so
far: to go and see a doctor, if there is a doctor available, if there is a
polyclinic, if there is a hospital.
Diagnosed with glaucoma –a serious disease--: 19 609
patients, which accounts for 2.86 % of the entire population.
Diagnosed with pterygium: 43 875 patients, which
accounts for 6.40 % of the entire population.
Diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy: 1 038 patients,
which accounts for 0.16% of the entire population.
Diagnosed with refractive defects, myopia,
astigmatism, and other sight conditions: 152 371 patients. It means that 22.22 % of the entire
population suffers from this problem.
What happened? What we had first done with the
disabled was done again to identify sight problems, and these were the
results. Now we have expanded this
program to screen for other disorders.
You will see:
Active screening for chronic kidney failure
You know that this condition is troublesome. If it is not treated on time, it may require
the use of an artificial kidney until a transplant is possible.
In the
In the municipality, only 168 cases of chronic kidney
failure were known.
Of the 13 098 patients at risk, 1 608 tested positive
for kidney damage (12.2% of those tested).
Of these, 98 were under the age of 4; 30 between the
ages of 5 and 14; 30 between the ages of 15 and 24; 532 between the ages of 25
and 59; and 918 were 60 years and older.
A total of 1 440 people in an area of the Cerro
municipality did not know they suffered from kidney failure.
Of the 1 608 people diagnosed with a kidney
condition, 1 268 patients (78.8%) are in the initial stages of the condition,
and can take measures to prevent the development of kidney failure and its
serious consequences.
In the Isle of Youth, where the screening was also
conducted, 77 398 people, or 96.6 % of the population, were tested. A total of 14 322 people, 18.5 % of the
population, tested positive for kidney damage. Of these, 13 460 people can take
measures to prevent the development of kidney failure. If this condition is not
detected at an early stage, the chances of suffering kidney damage are high.
To illustrate what an active screening can mean for a
given population:
In the
I have spoken to you only about cataracts (APPLAUSE),
which affects a sense as important as the sight, because many persons did not
realize they were loosing their sight. The disease was discovered in its
initial stages. Our country has today
the human capital and the equipment needed to do solve this problem.
Active screening has become the word of order. These figures are unbelievable. There’s nowhere you can find them, simply
because they were never recorded anywhere.
Pinar del Río
has this percentage of people suffering from cataracts and it accounts for
approximately 14% of the country’s population.
Now we have to take these ophthalmologic studies to other provinces, to
find out what is going on in Granma, Holguín, and elsewhere in the
country. Why could we do that active
screening in Pinar del Río? Because there is a building where 1000
ophthalmologists are studying, in addition to the several hundreds that we have
today in our country, with the equipment and the means they need. We sent 200 of them to Pinar del Río to carry
out the active screening, and in quite a few places, surgeries have started to
be performed.
Now, just imagine how many patients will have
undiagnosed heart conditions, how many will have an incipient cancerous
formation, at a stage when it can be successfully treated. Thus, based on all of that which I explained
here and also there, at the MERCOSUR Conference as well as at the
What will happen to the rest of the countries if they
do not do this, if there is no one who could do this, if medical care is mostly
in the hands of private practitioners, at a time when neo-liberalism has been
doing away with social security, including social security hospitals and public
hospitals, to privatize medicine?
Do any of you believe, compatriots, that this problem
can be solved by privatizing medicine? (SHOUTS OF “NO!”).
Each of those surgeries costs…some charge 1000
dollars, others 1 500, others 2000. A
cataract surgery in the
This is too important. How many persons would be dying every year
out of lack of a timely diagnosis? How much could we increase the life
expectancy rate if we take care of children, and do what we are doing for
them? Of course we can not lower the
infant mortality rate below zero; obviously, it is too difficult to take it
down to zero, but there is no doubt that that we will take it down below those
levels I was referring to when speaking about all of these provinces. I am speaking about those children whose more
than 100 deaths per every 1 000 live births before the Revolution have now been
reduced to 5. We have gone a long way,
which means a 95 % improvement. And if
you intend to go from 5 down to 0, and you lower that rate to 3, that means
that you have improved by 2%. We will be
speaking again about all of these diseases later, but the problem is already on
the table and at the international level.
Let’s see if they keep on with the “transitions” nonsense, at a time
when the world needs to be revolutionized because that will be the only way in
which it could be saved. And I have only
referred to health and environmental pollution, and the enormous amount of
stupid things done by this species, as a result of the economic and social
system, which has already become anachronistic.
Capitalism, and its more developed stage which is imperialism, are the
ones which waste by the cartloads, and the ones which have designed this world
order filled with hunger and hardships.
Fortunately we can understand and speak about
these topics, and you listen with great interest, as the one we see
here, because this is not the same people that existed back in 1959; this is
not the people who lived under capitalism, that was unable to understand any of
this. People died without learning to
read and write. There was no television,
no one who could inform the people, as today it is the case in many countries
of the world, where peoples only watch and listen to advertisements.
As you know, our television, our radio, our
newspapers, have no advertisements. They
can launch a campaign about something, but not an advertisement. What a big difference! We now see that those media, those mechanisms
to the service of the people, can render extraordinary benefits to all
citizens, to the country, to households, to children.
There are countries in
Great efforts
are being devoted to remodel, equip and adapt health facilities across the
country's municipalities following new conceptions.
One hundred and seventy three polyclinics have been
refurbished. Works on 33 of them were completed in the first half of this year.
Efforts are underway to complete the construction works of 60 other polyclinics
during the year 2006. The abovementioned studies would benefit greatly if the
pace of this program is stepped up. I am
sure that all compatriots anywhere, based on these realities that we have been
analyzing here, will make greater efforts, because we have the equipment, we
have the staff, we have all that is needed to advance quickly in this
direction.
Four hundred and fifty three wards offer
rehabilitation services to all of the country’s municipalities. Forty four new
wards will become operational, which will make a total of 497. Two million five
hundred and fifty seven thousand patients have already benefited from these
services.
You may rest assured that the world's most modern
equipment has been purchased to equip our physiotherapy and rehabilitation
centers and that our technical personnel is undergoing intensive training in
the use of these technologies and to obtain the advanced knowledge needed to
offer these valuable services (Applause).
By the way, let me tell you that the medical brigade
of the “Henry Reeve” Contingent which went to Pakistan included 400 physiotherapist
and rehabilitators from all provinces –and there were some who were sent by
this province, because we asked for them in every province—and we have
thousands, and they are receiving more and more equipment. These are state-of-the-art equipment. I could mention, as an example, the equipment
for the hydraulic massage of the upper limbs of the body, and the equipment for
the hydraulic massage of the lower limbs of the human body.
We have already bought 600 such sets of equipment for
Cuba and another 600 for Venezuela –there are some over there, and there are
already some here too-- (APPLAUSE); exceptional electromagnetic equipment,
which produces all kinds of vibrations.
Those are around 14 pieces of equipment in each set.
For some months now –nothing has been said about
this—we have been working to create a hospital for athletes, although it will
offer its services to other persons too.
Pitchers usually suffer from lesions on muscular fibers which prevent
them from performing properly. So is the
case for many other athletes.
There is one more thing. Those highly proficient athletes can not
retire just like that. No one has
studied yet the effects of spending an X number of hours doing exercises which
are as tough as a long distance race, weight-lifting, or many other exercises.
Sports are very attractive. See how soccer mobilized the whole
world. But, who has taken care of the
health problems of athletes? Well, our country will, and a whole hospital will
be devoted to research in this field. We
are already taking the first steps in that direction, and many others have been
taken in other areas: nutrition must be
one of them, and another must be the amount of calories, as well as proteins,
the effects of cholesterol, fatty acids, and food. All of that will be studied in detail and
afterwards we will convey to others the results (APPLAUSE).
Municipal intensive care units
A total number of 67 859 patients have been treated.
A total of 57.9 % of these (39 309 patients) experienced a full recovery
without being referred to other health institutions.
A bit less than one third of patients had to be
referred to other health institutions outside of their municipality (22 198
patients, 32.7 % of the total).
The number of lives saved amounts to 18 737 patients
at the new intensive care units (APPLAUSE) including those who were at risk of
dying when they received medical attention at the municipal intensive care
units –and how long has it been since these intensive care units have been
established? Because this is not only
about intensive therapy, this also includes the emergency cardiology services,
the ECG, the defibrillator at
the polyclinic which is nearby the house of citizens who live in the cities; in
the countryside these could be farther.
You know what it means to receive immediate medical assistance…In Cuba,
heart problems are the first cause of death, and most of patients die on the
way to the hospital, they die because they did not receive immediate assistance
within half an hour or one hour. They
take one and a half hours, two hours, and by applying all relevant medications
the blood clots can be removed. A high
number of persons can be saved if they are assisted by an experienced
professional and receive those medications, using equipment which help them to
find out what is wrong with the patient.
The diagnosis is not based only on the doctor’s judgment.
The survival rate for patients suffering from
bronchial asthma with moderate or severe bronchospasms is of 99.6 %. Sometimes a pneumonia or an asthma can create
an irreversible condition if the equipment is not there (APPLAUSE).
The general survival rate for patients suffering from
more than one trauma or severe lesions has been of 97.1 %. It went up to 98.1 %
in the first half of 2006.
The survival rate for patients with a cerebrovascular
condition is of 95.5 %.
Of the 3 185 patients treated for acute myocardial
infarctions, 1 439 (45.2%) benefited from thrombolysis services offered at
municipal intensive care units.
The survival rate for patients who suffered acute
myocardial infarctions is of 92.0%.
A total of 166 municipal ambulance stations have been
constructed –and they all have those equipment-- and a total of 402 ambulances
have been distributed for use in case of emergencies.
Though there’s much more to speak about, I don’t want
to carry on for too much longer. Just listen to what I wrote. The sun is
rising, minute by minute, and the heat can become quite unbearable. Today, on
July 26, the day when we commemorate the battles which took place in Santiago
and Bayamo, at 7:00 PM, in the city of Holguín, we will inaugurate the largest
system of synchronized power generators in the country, generators which will
produce more than 200,000 kilowatts of electricity, the equivalent, in power,
to a Felton thermoelectric plant, a system which was set up in only 5 months. I
will then have the opportunity to take up other topics.
Before concluding, allow me to repeat what I said on
“It was with great satisfaction that we witnessed the
beginning of these four programs in Granma, a province so full of history, so
full of merits.
"We cannot forget that in this province, in
“We cannot forget that this is the place where the
slaves were first emancipated, thanks to the revolutionary gesture of that
great patriot, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who had the opportunity to study and
thus conceive and lead a revolution. His awareness led him inexorably to that
essential act of justice. He marched towards Bayamo, his troops took the city,
and, in Bayamo, glorious pages, the most glorious pages of our nation's history
were written. There, that anthem that fills us with pride and moves us every
time we hear it was first sung. There, Máximo Gómez led the first ‘machete’
charge against the colonial forces that, coming from
Long live the Revolution! (Shouts of “Long live the Revolution!")
Homeland or death!
We shall overcome!
(Ovation)