Pres. Maduro defends Cuban medicine against slander campaign

teleSUR English

President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, condemns the slanderous campaign by U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and U.S. authorities against Cuban doctors who are on internationalist missions outside of their country.

Transcript

00:00I am very glad that at this meeting, which has summoned authorities from science and

00:09technology from our countries, that you have made solid progress on creating a unified

00:18ALBA team for a center to develop artificial intelligence for ALBA-TCP.

00:25That's a great decision, a great step.

00:29Luckily, in our countries we have lucid minds, scientists, first-class scientists, who will

00:39guarantee an impeccable work on this line of work.

00:48It's also very important all the proposals made so that scientific institutions of our

00:56countries at different levels might develop areas that have to do with microbiology, biotechnology.

01:07It was Fidel Castro in the 1980s who started talking about biotechnology when most people

01:14didn't know what that word meant.

01:17The first time I heard, I remember having heard, the idea of developing an independent

01:27biotechnology model was in 1986 by Fidel Castro.

01:33There was no Internet.

01:34There was none of that.

01:36The only thing that we had was the edition of Grama International, the Cuban journal,

01:45which reached our embassy here.

01:53And it spoke about nanotechnology, physiology, chemistry, regenerative medicine, catalytic

02:01medicine, biology, computational chemistry, telecommunications, archaeology, medicinal

02:10chemical chemistry, and many other areas of scientific sharing for developing the future.

02:23The world ahead will be defined by the development of science, technology, and knowledge.

02:28And we are ready to join that world and develop our capacities.

02:32Today we can say from ALBA, and if we say it together, because the unity of our peoples

02:42is larger than our integration, because integration is about different parts coming together,

02:49but union is fusion of all our strengths of the knowledge of education and its expression

02:59in innovation technology.

03:05The union gets built as a network, and it establishes multidimensional foundations for

03:20every aspect of society in this century.

03:25It's very important creating a bank for scientific projects for the great capacity Cuba has,

03:34which is an avant-garde country in this regard.

03:41And the capacities that we have been developing with a great mission of science and technology,

03:49the capacities of each of our country, the issue of telemedicine, an advanced method

04:02which is already being implemented in many of our countries.

04:10If anyone has developed that concept, and today we can start sharing that concept, it

04:17would be Cuban medicine.

04:19So I want to congratulate and thank from Caracas, from ALBA, to all governments and peoples

04:30of the Caribbean for their loving, strong reply to this garbage of a political man,

04:43Marco Rubio, of staining the moral and honor of Cuban doctors, of Cuban medicine, in that

04:51recent tour he had through the region.

04:56He came looking for wool, and he left without any single thing.

05:10We have lots of things to talk about Cuban medicine.

05:19Deep in our countryside, deep in our low-income neighborhoods, we have the loving hand of

05:28Cuban doctors who have saved many people.

05:35With science and love, they have been taking care of people through missions founded in 2003.

05:46In April, it will be 22 years of such missions.

05:53In Venezuela, we have witnessed through that mission what humane medicine, healing medicine, means.

06:02President Bruno, salute on my behalf Cuban General Raul Castro Ruz and President Canel

06:12Bermudez and all the Cuban people which might be watching this work meeting right now through

06:21Telesur, they know that developing this mission of health, when it started in Venezuela for

06:37many years, it was a target of the Venezuelan right, a permanent target, and they attacked

06:48the mission, but the people noticed the humility, the knowledge, the attitude, the disposition

07:00of Cuban doctors right there in their neighborhoods or in their area, and it's one of the great

07:09achievements of the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro.

07:14In Venezuela, we have, just like in Cuba you have Fidel and Che Guevara as a paradigm of a revolutionary

07:23doctor, we also have a paradigm in Venezuela which was canonized by Pope Francis declaring

07:33him a saint, Saint José Gregorio Hernández, a good man, who using the values of Jesus Christ,

07:47he wanted to become a monk, a priest, but he couldn't, but he served God and he served our

07:58Lord Jesus Christ through social medicine, which as a concept did not exist a hundred years ago,

08:08but today does, and José Gregorio Hernández here in north of Caracas, close to where you were today,

08:18climbing to the north of the mountain, there was a parish, La Pastora, he had his house over there,

08:27the house is still there, he was a man of science as well, he was one of the pioneers in Venezuela

08:37and in Latin America of microbiology. He wrote an impressive treaty on microbiology a little over

08:51a hundred years ago, a man of faith, he was a missionary, what we would call a missionary,

08:58and he took care, he was very famous for his skills as a doctor, he would take care of the

09:07most simple people. We could say that he was the founder of the medical missions because he went

09:21to every house where there was a person sick, and he would apply changes in those houses,

09:32the changes that he thought were needed for the health of the family, and he would assign

09:38treatments, and if the person would not have money to buy medicine, he would buy them himself from

09:47his own pocket. When in 1902, the European countries' powers came over here with over

09:5620 warships and attacked the Guayra port, the port of Zulia, do you know why that happened a

10:06hundred years ago? A little over a hundred years ago, they were coming to claim the debts generated

10:15during the independence wars, the debt that they said Venezuela had with them, and it was

10:23on the contrary. It was Europe who was in debt with us because of slavery for taking our pearls

10:32or gold for reaping the continent of natural resources, and they sent warships with a

10:40strategy to occupy Venezuela. And that man, who was a man of faith and with his science,

10:50as soon as he heard of what was happening, he went and registered with the army, and he wanted

11:02to have a rifle to defend his country. A man of faith, a social service man, an example of

11:10Christian morality, which is the true socialist morality, and more than anything, he was a patriot

11:17ready to defend his country against imperialist aggressors. He is our paradigm. And with José

11:24Gregorio, 22 years later, we are celebrating his sanctification, and we are celebrating that the

11:34Barrio Adentro mission today has first-rate Cuban doctors and specialists, which, with their humane

11:50practice, are decrying everything that Marco Rubio has been saying. So, if you allow me,

11:57from our Bolivarian heart, we are thanking Cubans' doctors for their bravery. To all of you,

Category

Transcript

Recommended