BY: MAYLIN VIDAL / PL
Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
AUGUST 25, 2021
Dressed in their impeccable white uniforms, Argentine doctors Hugo Saidon and Esteban Sotelo proudly wear the emblem of graduating in Cuba and being able to save lives as they do today in Haiti.
Both doctors left the Buenos Aires airport last Saturday as part of a humanitarian mission of the White Helmets, a body dependent on the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
Saidon and Sotelo have tattooed in their lives those teachings of humanistic and supportive medicine, acquired in their years of study at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), which they put into practice once again in a nation severely hit by an earthquake.
Since their arrival on Haitian soil, they have not stopped for a moment. Along with his other 23 compatriots who make up the humanitarian brigade, they are already providing medical care in the commune of Corail, in the department of Grand’Anse, where this southern nation installed a hospital with a type 1 level of care.
The humanitarian mission is headed by the president of White Helmets, Marina Cardelli, and a Medical Team with services of emergency ambulatory care, pediatrics, general medical clinic, obstetrics, and traumatology deployed in Corail.
There is no time to lose. Haiti today needs everyone, because once again capricious nature takes its toll on a people that mourn more than two thousand compatriots who died in the 7.2 earthquakes on the Richter scale that removed that island on August 14.
In their hectic hours, via WhatsApp, Saidon and Sotelo took a brief pause to tell how they live this experience.
‘We continue the legacy that Cuba gave us. Homeland is humanity, ‘Sotelo stressed in a message to Prensa Latina, who experienced a double emotion upon arriving at a hospital and learning that its director had also graduated in Cuba. “We are tremendously happy to find out,” he said.
‘We are in Haiti on this White Helmets mission. We are 24 volunteers, including nine doctors, two of whom graduated from ELAM, ‘explained Saidon, who pointed out that they came to that brother town with the principles of international solidarity and humanism with which they were trained in the international school. of medicine, which has welcomed students from 122 countries in the last 22 years.
Solidarity and humanism are shared by the other doctors who are here today, said Saidon, who was also excited to have found himself in this new mission with his brothers from the Cuban medical brigades who in the last two decades have been saving lives in Haiti. We feel a bit Cuban and meeting our colleagues is wonderful, said the doctor after adding that they hope in these 20 days of work on Haitian soil, to help as much as possible.