South Africa Highlights Cuba Collaboration in Public Health

South Africa lacks about 20,000 health specialists in the public sector, shortage it tries to counteract through the contribution of the medical cooperation program with Cuba.

An article in the Sowetan newspaper quoted Professor Yusuf Veriava, from the ministerial committee of academic review of medical collaboration Nelson Mandela-Fidel Castro, who explained that through the agreement 'are sent South Africans to Cuba for medical training'.

And in turn -he emphasized- 'Cuban doctors counterparts' travel to the African nation to serve in the public sector.

Veriava, former head of Internal Medicine at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), asserted that 80 percent of all specialists in South Africa are concentrated in the private area of the provinces of Western Cape and Gauteng.

The Health Department spokesman, Joe Maila Health, told the same source that at least 508 South African graduates trained in Cuba are working in this moment in the national territory.

In addition, "we have 2,967 youngsters studying at this moment 'in the Caribbean nation.

This cooperation program, born on the initiative of the leaders Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro celebrates its 20thanniversary in 2016.

It was on February 27, 1996 that the first group of doctors reached the South African soil to work, specially in rural areas.

At present there are 460 Cuban collaborators in South Africa, of which 276 are health professionals.