Twenty years since the start of Cuban medical cooperation after the Kashmir earthquake.
Islamabad, October 14, 2025._ Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the arrival of the first flight of the Cuban Medical Brigade “Henry Reeve” to Pakistan, following the devastating earthquake that had ravaged the northeast of the country six days earlier. The 7.6 magnitude earthquake caused 86,000 deaths, around 100,000 injuries, and left some three million people homeless.
Just a few days after the disaster, a telephone conversation between Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro and the then Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf set the stage for Cuba to begin the deployment of what is, to date, the largest medical assistance mission of the Henry Reeve Contingent. For eight months, our country deployed more than 2,400 doctors and paramedical personnel, established 32 field hospitals and two aid camps, carried out dozens of transport flights, and sent tons of medicines and medical equipment. During that period, our aid workers treated more than 1.7 million patients, performed around 14,506 surgical operations, many of which were complex, and more than 166,000 people received specialized rehabilitation services.
The Commander's premise was fulfilled: “You can't solve anything with a few million dollars; what you need is medical personnel to save lives and treat the sick. That's where you see what a genuine revolution is, the values it instills, the enormous wealth of human capital we have created.”
Among the many anecdotes from those months, one that stands out is that of the doctors who had to climb mountains with heavy backpacks, enduring extreme cold, to reach isolated villages where there were no roads for vehicles. Their patients still remember deep wounds left untreated, fractures left unimmobilized, and how the arrival of the brigade was literally the difference between life and death for many. Some still say that the Cubans were the first to arrive and the last to leave, staying behind while others had already withdrawn.
Today, as we remember these 20 years, we pay tribute to all of Cuba's international medical cooperation, a concrete example of the internationalism of the Cuban Revolution under Fidel's principles. (EMBACUBA PAKISTAN)