Reinaldo Escobar, Translator: Unstated
On a day like yesterday, thirty years ago, the Carlos J. Finlay Medical
Sciences Detachment was formed. In front of 3,800 young medical
students, gathered in the Karl Marx Theater, Fidel Castro warned then
that the University was for the revolutionaries, a condition more
demanding for those who were responsible for people's health. In
commemoration yesterday, the Minister of Health, Dr. Roberto Morales
Ojeda received a certificate addressed to the Cuban president.
At the same time that the ceremony was taking place in the auditorium of
the Public Health Ministry, about 35 miles away in Guanajay, Dr. Jeovany
Jimenez was finishing his first week on a hunger strike. The young
doctor is protesting to demand that his right to practice his profession
be restored; it he was barred from medicine in September 2006 after
having sent a letter complaining about the insignificance of the salary
increase for health care workers. Now, after sending a total of 20
letters over five years with no reply from the Ministry of Public
Health, Jeovany is resorting to a hunger strike.
The arrogance of the former Minister, Jose Ramon Balaguer, made that
demand for a wage to be seen as a reprehensible act. Revolutionaries do
not demand more money for their work. The indifference of the current
Minister is surely based on the belief that Revolutionaries must have a
blind confidence in their leaders, even when they are apparently wrong,
and do not go around with appeals to demand justice. According to these
deep ideological principles, Jeovany is not a good revolutionary and
obviously can not be a doctor.
16 March 2012
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment