Cuba Notes for February 2010

By Tom Whitney

Cubans help children in Haiti

Giving child survivors a boost, especially a psychological one, represents a challenge in post earthquake Haiti. That was true too following the 2005 Tsunami in South East Asia. A month after that catastrophe, the UN children’s agency UNICEF tried to identify what worked to protect children’s mental health.

Specialists working with surviving children in Sri Lanka, for example, found that “Education and play are proving to be among the best ways to help children heal, providing a semblance of normality and an important outlet for self-expression.”

The UNICEF station there had “emptied its stores of children’s recreation kits” to distribute them among hundreds of relief camps. “The emotional needs of children are one of our main concerns,” said UNICEF Child Protection Officer Christine Watkins, quoted at the time on the agency’s web site.

Watkins explained that play and games help “because they encourage children to unburden themselves.” Children are given an opportunity “to help support each other.” She praised “home grown community based approaches” as promoting “children’s recovery and resilience,” adding that “The best kind of healing comes from the people themselves.”

Likewise in the Haitian town Croix des Bouquets, outside Port au Prince, lots of children need support. Those gathered at what prior to the earthquake had been a playground seemed dejected. A Cuban field hospital was occupying the space.

But community leaders organized a meeting between parents and Cuban health workers to find ways to help the children, “the most vulnerable population sector in catastrophe situations,” according to the report on Prensa Latina. Cuban doctor Cristóbal Martínez spoke with the parents and children. An earthquake survivor provided translation into Creole.

Martínez sketched out the “program for mitigation of psychosocial damage” that he and his colleagues knew about. Discussion ensued, and soon there was a green light for a “children’s festival.” That event featured story readings, singing of Haitian children’s songs, and picture painting sessions “permitting children to put their nightmares off to one side, at least for a while.”

With skillful rendering of traditional rhythms, teachers at the National School of Haitian Art “filled the spectacle with life”. They had children and adults singing words of optimism with the promise that “the country would get by this tragedy and overcome misery.”

Guerlanda, Christopher the Olser and the other children were soon smiling and on the verge of dancing. They insisted that reporter Enrique Torres show them the pictures he took of their drawings. Doctor Martínez observed that “Play for children is a primary psychological necessity. If we satisfy their need to play, we are giving them something.”

Martínez suggested that “although there had been a terrible disaster, if children go to school, eat, play, and can enjoy themselves, in their consciousness the disaster has already passed…When these children are in school and can play and do a sport, which definitely is a game, the battle is practically won.”

The Cuban team carries out its program of play, recreation, and sport at the periphery of the health care site. They promised to introduce it in other parts of the devastated area including Leogane, east of Port au Prince. There, 15 Haitian activists belonging to the Simon Bolivar community have been charged with “improving the mental health of their younger compatriots.”  (Source)

 

Cuba: Medical outreach to Haiti is long term

Cuban doctors and nurses have worked in dozens of countries offering both long term and emergency care. Three weeks after the earthquake in Haiti, over 1000 doctors, either Cuban or Cuban trained, are ensconced in and around Port au Prince, with more elsewhere in Haiti. They include Haitian doctors trained in Cuba, Cuban doctors already posted to Haiti, and Cuban specialists in disaster medicine on the scene with nurses immediately after the earthquake.

Since Hurricane George in 1998, hundreds of Cuban doctors have worked in Haiti. Reporter María Laura Carpineta writes: “The Cubans did not land in Haiti in helicopters like heroes…The Cuban doctors arrived here many years ago and in silence. And in silence they were the first to attend to hurricane victims.”

The Cuban team has cared for 45,000 earthquake victims. Its 18 surgical brigades have performed over 3200 operations. Physicians and surgeons from Spain, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Germany, and Argentina, have worked “against the clock” in three still intact Port au Prince hospitals managed by Cubans.

Foreign medical contingents are already arranging to leave Haiti, according to Carpineta. “That’s a pity. The Haitian people still need us,” she heard from Carlos Alberto García Domínguez, head of the Cuban medical mission in Haiti for almost two years. He outlined plans to locate sanitation, epidemiology, and mental health teams throughout the country. “We will be here when everyone has gone,” he promised.

The United States and Cuba constitute the largest foreign presence in Haiti, except for UN “peacekeepers.” Contact between Cuban and U.S. humanitarian teams on the ground has been nil. For Carpineta’s full report go to www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-139567-2010-02-04.html.

The right wing Panamanian government’s action last month in ordering the departure of a Cuban ophthalmological team suggests, however, that Cuban medical outreach is not always acceptable. The 16 Cuban eye surgeons returning last week to Havana from three years in Panama had performed vision restoring operations on 50,000 people. They were part of “Operation Miracle,” the Cuban – Venezuelan project that over five years has provided eye surgery for 1.8 million people in 35 countries.