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 EchavarrĂ­a, 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

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 DĂ­az-Canel BermĂşdez
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.
2026 Casa Ben Linder Bluefields Delegation
Nicaragua and The Miseducation of the People of the United States
17 June 2026
Nicaragua is a living example of anti-imperialist resistance and people-centered development. The job of those in the U.S.
Miguel DĂ­az-Canel BermĂşdez
Cuba will not surrender! Cuba persists and resists! And that persistence is intolerable to the empire!
10 June 2026
Speech delivered by Miguel Mario DĂ­az-Canel BermĂşdez, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and president of

More Stories


  • El Sayed Harris
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    El-Sayed Is the Arab Obama
    11 Aug 2026
    The Democratic Party will recalibrate its messaging after its well-funded senate candidate in a Michigan primary lost to Abdul El-Sayed, who by his own admission is a capitalist, not a socialist, and…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    DOCUMENT: Declaration of the Rights of Caribbean Peoples to Self-Determination and Self-Government, West Indies National Emergency Committee, 1940.
    11 Aug 2026
    “Conflicts over colonies constitute the major source of war in the modern world.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Saudi Arabia Forms a 14-State Coalition to Stop Ansar Allah
    11 Aug 2026
    Saudi Arabia has formed a 14-state coalition to stop Ansar Allah, which has threatened to blockade its oil tankers in the Red Sea.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Why The Democrat Party’s Precipitous Slide from De Facto to De Jure Racism Should Surprise No One
    11 Aug 2026
    “...when I talk about our political institutions, there is no reason for any American to continue to be victimized by what we still refer to as the Republican and Democratic parties…We don’t have to…
  • x
    Djibo Sobukwe
    Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution and Africa
    11 Aug 2026
    In commemoration of the Fidel Castro centenary on August 13, 2026, we present remarks given by Djibo Sobukwe at The Symposium on Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution on January 21, 2017,…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us