Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Cuba Has Trained 170 Doctors From the US For Free
Cuba News Agency
08 Aug 2017
🖨️ Print Article
Cuba educates medical students including those from the US for free
Cuba educates medical students from around the world, including those from the US for free.

by Cuba News Agency

Under Fidel Castro’s direction, Cuban became a “medical superpower,” setting new standards for global solidarity in the interests of human health. Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) has been training students from the United States to be doctors since 1999, and “has graduated more than 28,500 doctors from 103 countries, free of charge.”

Cuba Has Trained 170 Doctors From the US For Free

by Cuba News Agency

This article previously appeared in Granma.

“In my country no one helps the other student, here teachers support the preparation.”

Cuba has graduated 170 doctors from the United States through the project of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), which was initiated by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in November 1999.
In exclusive to Cuban News Agency, Zenia Díaz Catalá, director of the general secretariat of the ELAM project, said that since the first graduation in 2005, to date, ELAM have graduated more than 28,500 doctors from 103 countries, free of charge.
Dr. David Floyd, from the 2016-2017 promotion, thanked the Cuban leadership, the Cuban people, the teachers and workers of this noble project, an example of integration between peoples for a more humane world.
“For me it has been a wonderful experience, I am impressed on the link between study and work, unlike training in the United States and other nations,” stressed the young physician.
“In Cuba we are trained by touching the patient, that was the greatest thing, the solidarity; in my country no one helps the other student, here teachers support the preparation with excellent behavior,” said Floyd, an African-American, who studied in Cuba for seven years, including the pre-doctor studies.
The doctor finished his curricula at the Salvador Allende Faculty of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana, an institution that graduated 52 foreign doctors, 25 of them from the United States, Dr. Suiberto Echavarría, dean of that institution, said.
David Floyd, the father of the recent graduate, conveyed his eternal gratitude and said he was very impressed, pleased and honored because his son is a doctor trained in Cuba under ethical and moral principles, with a humanist conception.
Diaz Catalá explained that currently the ELAM project has a enrollment of 4,969 students from 112 nations in the 21 faculties of the country's medical science universities, of which 83 are from the United States.

Cuba
socialism

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Black Alliance For Peace
Declaration of a Zone of Peace
26 August 2026
From the blockade of Cuba to the kidnapping of Venezuela's president, U.S.
Luis Britto García
Venezuela Is Not Iran
19 August 2026
Venezuela is not Iran or Cuba, but those nations teach us that sovereignty is not given but is obtained through resistance.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Venezuela, Memory, and the Long Arc of U.S. Imperialism
29 July 2026
Memories of a sovereign Venezuela collide with the reality that it is now a U.S. vassal state.
Sharon Kyle
Cuba Is Being Punished for Refusing Dependency
29 July 2026
Baba Akili and Thandiwe Abdullah returned from Havana with an eyewitness account of empty streets, failing hospitals and a people enduring the
Sara Flounders
U.S. Government Terrorists Weaponize Subpoenas vs. the Left
29 July 2026
The House Ways and Means subpoenas against peace and justice organizations, paired with the State Department's designation of Cuba as the cente
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
INTERVIEW: How the Cuban Revolution was Made, Fidel Castro, 1979
22 July 2026
“In other words, people revolted against the system. But they did not know that the system was called capitalism.”
Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez
Cuba's President Responds to Marco Rubio's War Propaganda
22 July 2026
Cuba's president, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, posted this statement in response to the
Carlos Martinez
Cuba’s economic reforms and the prospects for socialist renewal
01 July 2026
The following article by Carlos Martinez, co-editor of Friends of Socialist China and author of The East Is Still Red, examines the most far-re
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LECTURE: How U.S. Imperialism Ruled Cuba, Armando G. Entralgo, 1965
24 June 2026
“The U.S.A.
Isaac Saney
Walking the Tight-Rope and Threading the Needle: Strategic Adaptation Under Siege: Cuba's Economic Reforms and the Defence of Socialist Sovereignty
24 June 2026
Washington's economic war has left Cuba with few good options.

More Stories


  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Rwanda's Stillborn Middle-Income Economy
    10 Jul 2024
    Rwanda’s economic miracle is a lie.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Million Worker March 20th Anniversary: Project 2025— Keep Death ‘Alive?’
    10 Jul 2024
    Million Worker March 20th Anniversary: Project 2025— Keep Death ‘Alive?’ is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    For African/Black Working Class and Colonized Peoples, Midterm Elections in the U.S. Offer No Relief from War, Repression and Capitalist Misery
    10 Jul 2024
    The 50-year-old neo-liberal agenda explains why political choices in this country provide little change that benefits the masses of people. The recent midterm election results will not bring about an…
  • John Parker
    Demanding Violent Obedience, Illegal Sale of Palestinian Land Embraced by Biden, Governors, Mayors and City Councilmembers
    10 Jul 2024
    As Israel's genocidal campaign against Palestinians continues, so does the theft of Palestinian land. Real estate events that sell off illegal settlements acquired through settler violence in…
  • Rasha Khatib , Martin McKee , Salim Yusuf
    Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential
    10 Jul 2024
    The data for the death count in Gaza collected by the Gaza Health Ministry has been extremely difficult to gather due to the onslaught by Israel. It is also difficult to calculate the scale of…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us