Dear friends,
In May 2015, a Cuban medical brigade arrived in Nepal to assist the victims of the powerful earthquake that had struck that sister country a month earlier. Our specialists remained in these distant lands for more than 90 days, providing medical care to thousands of patients in the affected districts of the capital, Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur.
This beautiful gesture of solidarity helped to sow a lasting affection and friendship. It exemplifies the values that drive thousands of healthcare professionals from our small Caribbean island to provide their services in more than 50 countries today.
Please read the attached article written for the occasion by Ambassador Zéner Javier Caro González, who was then appointed special envoy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba to accompany the medical brigade to Nepal.
Fraternal greetings,
Juan Carlos Marsan
Cuban Ambassador to India, concurrent Ambassador to Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh
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Brothers in the Himalayas: the footprint of the Cuban medical brigade in Nepal, 2015.
In May 2015, while the world was looking towards other tragedies or celebrating other triumphs, a group of doctors crossed half the planet from the Caribbean to the Himalayan valleys. Their destination was Nepal, a country shaken by a devastating earthquake, which affected its largest cities and numerous isolated communities that were waiting with hope for the miracle of medical care. They arrived unarmed, but with white coats, backpacks full of medicines and a deep vocation.
They were the 38 members of the Cuban medical brigade, a contingent of men and women trained in the internationalist solidarity that characterizes the health system of the Caribbean island. In the middle of the ruins of Baktapur, on the dusty roads of Kathmandu, these doctors became more than just doctors: they were healers, friends, and in many cases, the first to look with professional compassion at the faces marked by the disaster.
For three months, they treated thousands of Nepalese. They conducted consultations under makeshift tarpaulins, in half-destroyed schools, in hospitals with very few resources. They were there, suturing wounds, treating complex fractures, performing emergency operations, preventing possible epidemic outbreaks, always with impeccable medical knowledge and total dedication.
The gratitude of the Nepalese people was translated not only in words, but also in looks and gestures. In the mothers who brought flowers to the rescuers of their children. In the children who learned how to write “thank you” in Spanish. In the elders who touched their hearts with their hands as a sign of respect. Some villagers called the Cubans “doktor dai” -brothers doctors-, and it was not only a form of affection, but an affective consecration.
In just one quarter, more than five thousand consultations and hundreds of minor and major surgeries were performed. But beyond the numbers, what remained was an indelible human imprint.
Today, ten years later, there are still Nepalese who remember that brigade as if it were a dream. And in Cuba, those doctors who lived in the Himalayan valleys carry in their memories the echo of gratitude, the eyes of the cured children, the sunrises full of clouds and the certainty of having done what had to be done.
Because when pain does not understand borders, solidarity should not understand distances either. And in 2015, Cuba and Nepal shook hands, not with treaties or speeches, but with the purest solidarity, the one that saves lives and unites peoples.
Zéner Javier Caro González