Report from Gail Reed, International Director of MEDICC, in Havana:

"Meanwhile, just an update on what’s happening here: the first of a contingent of 2,000 (yes, two thousand) graduates of the Latin American Medical School are leaving today for Haiti. Their mission is to integrate with the Cuban and Cuban-trained Haitian medical teams, to assist Haiti to build a public health system from the ground up. They will be rotating over time, but the commitment is to staff public health facilities in Haiti as long as is needed until there are enough Haitian medical personnel to take over. The idea is to rebuild ten times better than what existed before. We will have something up on our website shortly about all this.

What is most interesting about these graduates—I talked with many yesterday—is that they come by and large from very poor backgrounds themselves. Many of them indigenous. Nicaraguans, Hondurans and Salvadorans who remember the earthquakes in their own countries that motivated the opening of the Latin American School. Grads from Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia. And the Caribbean itself, including the DR—and three wonderful young doctors from St. Lucia and Dominica, who of course also speak Creole! Their commitment is inspiring. One young man was tearful as he spoke to me about his Haitian classmates who had graduated with him, how they had lost their families and homes, and he was anxious to do something that would help…

More later.