Beginning in 2000, students in the U.S. began studying in Havana free at the Latin American School of Medicine (LASM). Originally 500 students were offered scholarships annually. This has been increased to 1,000 for the seven-year medical school program. The only condition is that the students make a commitment to serving poor communities in the U.S. after receiving their medical licenses.

Chinere Knight and Ese Agari of Detroit, both graduates of Cass Technological High School, began their studies at the LASM in Havana in the fall of 2007. Knight heard about Cuba’s cutting edge status in medicine from her mother, Desiree Ferguson, who visited Cuba in 2001 for the National Conference of Black Lawyers. Ferguson was co-chair of the international gathering.

Over 3,400 students from 23 countries, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, are already at the LASM, also studying free. The school was established in the wake of the terrible hurricanes that caused many deaths and extensive damage in Central America in 1997.

“It showed you that, yes, we are in America and we have all these resources, but once you go through the bureaucracy and you go through the prejudice and the bias, you might not get the assistance that you should,” Knight told the Michigan Citizen, a Black news weekly in Detroit that published a feature article on these students in August 2007.

Detroit City Council member JoAnn Watson helped facilitate Knight’s and Agari’s scholarship process, logistics and fundraising with many supporters of Cuba in Metro Detroit.

The Rev. Dr. Lucius Walker Jr. spoke to the Detroit City Council about the Cuban medical school program in December 2006. Walker, Director of the Inter-Religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) and founder of Pastors for Peace, was the keynote speaker for the Jan. 21, 2008, annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rally in Detroit. Pastors for Peace administers the scholarship process for the Cuban medical school program. The first graduating class in the program with students from the U.S. received their diplomas in December 2007, along with their colleagues from all over the world.

Such events are in stark contrast to the U.S. where, confronted with an educational system rife with institutional oppression and massive economic barriers, poor, working class and students of color are virtually excluded from pursuing medical degrees, as well as higher education in general. Entrance exam fees and tests alone can cost thousands of dollars. Poor students in the U.S. wanting to obtain an M.D. are regularly forced to go deep in debt through often high-interest loans, or rely on loved ones also facing potential economic disasters such as layoffs, foreclosures and bankruptcies, particularly in Michigan.

The majority of U.S. students who have graduated from the LASM or are currently in the program are people of color and/or women. This reflects the demographics of the Cuban medical system. In the U.S. medical system, it’s just the reverse.

Cuba: A Beacon of Hope

A December 2004 New England Journal of Medicine article, “Affirmative Action, Cuban Style,” cites health indicators in Cuba as being “on par with those in the most developed nations.” According to the World Health Organization, Cuba has twice as many physicians per capita as the U.S., and the infant mortality rate is less than most cities in the U.S.

Much of this information is kept from the American public by the corporate media, but many North Americans caught a glimpse of the realities of Cuba’s medical system in Michael Moore’s latest documentary SiCKO! In the film, Moore brings rescue workers, sick from their exposure to pollutants in the wake of the attacks of 9/11, to Cuba, in hopes that they might receive the medical attention they are being denied by the for-profit health care system of the United States. Not surprisingly, they receive the care they need.

With a population of about 11 million, and facing severe obstacles due to the criminal blockade the U.S. has unilaterally imposed on the country, Cuba has sent more than 60,000 medical personnel to countries on every continent since its first internationalist brigade of 56 medical personnel to Algeria in May 1963. Cuba’s supply of medical personnel to the world exceeds even that of the World Health Organization.

But no Cuban doctors are allowed in the U.S.

Despite a dire need for healthcare services in this country, the blockade prohibits Cuban healthcare professionals from entering the U.S. The effect of this blockade was starkly exposed during Hurricane Katrina when Cuban medical personnel – with vast experience in dealing with tropical storms – were mobilized and ready to assist those devastated by the hurricane and subsequent floods. Both they and Venezuelan medical personnel were on planes, waiting on tarmacs in their respective countries. They were refused entry by the U.S. government, while mostly poor Black people were left to languish and die from a lack of basic medical equipment or untreated ailments.

Students like Agari and Knight are intent on remedying this situation by studying in Cuba and then returning to the U.S. to practice in their communities. They see hope for humanity in Cuba where becoming a doctor is motivated by humanitarian internationalism, not profit

"If we do want to improve our level of health and eradicate diabetes and hypertension, than we need to figure out some alternative way to do it. I think Cuba’s medical system offers that,” Knight told the Citizen.

Part of what motivated Knight was her work as a volunteer in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The experience, according to the Citizen, strengthened her belief in the social responsibility of medical professionals. While volunteering, she conducted interviews with other volunteers, and began studying the official procedures of FEMA and its terribly inadequate response to the disaster.

Knight added, “You have an obligation to work, when you come back to the U.S., in an underrepresented community, where there’s need. And you dedicate yourself to that for your entire career. I said, ‘that’s not a problem, I do that anyway.’”