Cuban President Sees Off Medical Team that Travelled to Fight Ebola

Cuban President Raul Castro Ruz bid farewell last night to 165 health professionals headed for Sierra Leone as part of the global fight against Ebola, the Granma newspaper reported today.

At the stairway to the plane, General Raul Castro clasped the hands of each of the members of the Cuban medical team as they left to perform their sworn duty to save lives, said the report which appeared in today’s edition of the paper.

The group includes 64 doctors and 102 nurses with more than 15 years of experience. The Ebola virus has killed thousands in western Africa, the paper pointed out.

According to the report, around 80 percent of those in the brigade have performed previous international missions, many of them in the very African continent.

Medical brigades headed for Liberia and Guinea Conakry were part of the group, headed to those countries as advance teams in order to prepare conditions for the arrival of additional Cuban collaborators, the article said.

Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers was also present at the airport send-off along with Roberto Morales Ojeda, Minister of Public Health.