Kenya: World Social Forum Praises Cuban Social Programmes
Nairobi — Participants in the seventh World Social Forum, currently underway in Kenya, have praised the educational and health programmes that Cuban professionals are carrying out worldwide.
The basic-literacy teaching method “Yo Si Puedo,” created by teacher Leonela Relys, and the Integral Health Programme (PIS), with which more than 29,400 professionals are serving in 68 countries, were particularly praised at the meeting Monday.
More than 1.5 million people have learned how to read and write between 2003 and 2005, in Venezuela alone, thanks to this method now being applied in 10 languages.
Bolivia, New Zealand, Mozambique, Haiti, Mexico, Argentina and Ecuador are among the nations that have implemented this method.
Cuban medical collaboration was also recognised with praise and encouragement from the the delegates at the showing of “Salud (Health),” a documentary directed and produced by Connie Field, with the slogan “Sometimes Aid Comes From Unthinkable Places.”
The film, which allowed Cuban doctors serving in two African countries to share the developments made in Cuba, assures that their nation has “one of the best health systems in the world.”
The Latin American country is currently training some 30,000 foreign doctors, including South Africans.
Cuba has collaborated with 154 nations from 1961 until the present, sending more than 270,000 collaborators, of which 132,000 are health professionals. [more]