Chávez announces plan with Cuba to provide surgery to the poor of Latin America and Caribbean with visual problems

 THE president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez announced yesterday that his country and Cuba are to initiate a plan to offer operations on the island free of charge to poor people with visual problems in Latin America and the Caribbean.  According to reports as much as 100,000 people may be helped.

“This is Mission Miracle. We want to get it underway soon to help our brothers and sisters with visual problems in a situation of poverty in any Latin America or Caribbean country; that is what Venezuela and Cuba are doing,” he affirmed on his weekly Sunday radio and TV program “Aló presidente,” reports DPA from Caracas.

The Venezuelan leader explained that if the mechanism is accepted by interested countries and communities in the region, it could “bring people with visual problems to Caracas for evaluation” and then send them on to Cuba for operations.

“So, just as we are sending thousands of Venezuelans with those problems to Cuba, we could send thousands of Latin Americans and Caribbeans... we want to help many people who have lost their sight or at the point of losing it so as to improve their situation and, in many situations, restore their sight,” he stated.

Cuba has thousands of teachers, sports coaches in Venezuela helping on popular community programs.

ECUADORIANS APPRECIATIVE OF CUBAN SOLIDARITY

QUITO, (PL).—The José Martí Ecuadorian-Cuban Cultural Institute and the National Solidarity Coordinating Committee have expressed their gratitude to Cuba and its president, Fidel Castro, for the generous decision to offer free medical care to an Ecuadorian child.

“You have touched the sensibilities of all Latin Americans, in particular those of Ecuador, to offer the island’s medical services so that little Hugo Manosalvas, of this country, can have his sight restored, affirms a letter from those two groups to the Cuban government.

Manosalvas needs an operation to recover vision in his left eye, which was to be carried out in the United States, but this has not as yet happened due to lack of economic resources.

“Thanks to the socialist Revolution in Cuba generous resource are being invested to practice international solidarity, following on from the dreams of José Martí, Simón Bolívar, Eloy Alfaro and our continental leaders,” the letter continues. “An Ecuadorian child has had the good fortune of being taken in by the island to protect him and give him the hope of a normal life.”

During a televised special presentation Fidel Castro offered young Hugo and his mother a free trip to Havana so that the child can undergo surgery on his left eye in the Cuban capital, as part of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

For the two Ecuadorian movements this exemplary gesture giving hope to children on the Latin America continent where infant mortality rates and health do not seem to be important concerns for most of their governments.

The national La Hora and El Comercio dailies covered Cuba’s offer to take in the boy for an operation totally free of charge.

Because she has been unable to raise $15,000 for the cost of surgery in the United States, her son’s operation has been postponed for 2.7 years.

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