Public meeting:

Listen to Cuban Educator Ezequiel Morales.

Saturday 9 April, 4-7 pm @ the MUA, North Fremantle

Entry by gold coin donation

The Australia Cuba Friendship Society is pleased to be hosting Ezequiel Morales from ICAP Cuba. We would like to invite you to a public meeting to welcome him and get first hand information about education and life in Cuba.

Please join us on the 9th April at the Maritime Union of Australia, MUA rooms in North Fremantle, 2-4 Kwong Alley cnr Queen Victoria Avenue from 4:00pm. (See Flyer attached for details and to distribute to your networks).

Ezequiel was born to a peasant family and spent his early years before the Revolution cleaning shoes and selling cakes in order to help support his family and to pay a ‘teacher’ to tutor in reading and writing. He was eight years old when the revolution triumphed and from then on he was able to attend a School Centre.

His vocation as a teacher began in 1961 when he joined the Cuban Literacy Campaign and at only ten years old taught illiterate peasants how to read and write. Since that time he has dedicated most of his career to the education sector as a teacher and later as a union leader. Ezequiel has participated in the continuous improvement of the National System of Education as a member of the Team of Authors.

Since 1996 Ezequiel has worked with the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and has become well known to Australian brigadistas joining the Southern Cross Brigade each year as the official translator.

His mastery of the English language has been very useful to carry out his work as a political official at ICAP, being able not only to lecture on many subjects, but also to serve as interpreter for a great number of outstanding personalities. In November 2007, he joined the 59th Global Edition Voyage of the Peace Boat. On this occasion, he was invited by the Japanese Organisation Peace Boat, to travel on the Japanese Cruise from Spain to Cuba, to deliver lectures on board to regular audiences of more than 400 people.

In Friendship,

Elizabeth Hulm

Branch Secretary

ACFS Perth

0421113343

acfsperth@gmail.com

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Doctors of Tomorrow
A special screening of the documentary by Tim Anderson about cooperation between Cuba and Timor Leste. It includes interviews with some of the 850 East Timorese students studying medicine with the Cubans in the biggest medical college on Earth. From 2010, these young people will begin to take control of their country's health system. Filmed in Timor Leste & Cuba.

7:30pm (following ACFS branch meeting at 6:30pm)
Monday 1 March

Perth Activist Centre (15/5 Aberdeen St, East Perth - next to McIver station)

Organised by Australia-Cuba Friendship Society
PO Box 1455, South Perth 6951

Email: acfsperth@gmail.com

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ACFS   

AUSTRALIA-CUBA FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY, WA BRANCH      

PO BOX 1455   SOUTH PERTH   WA   6951

acfsperth@gmail.com

28th January 2010

                 Open Letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Stephen Smith

PO Box 6022                                                        PO Box 901
House of Representatives                                       Inglewood WA 6932
Parliament House           
Canberra ACT 2600

To the Honourable Stephen Smith

We write with a letter of request for you to consider sending financial assistance from Australia to supply medicines and medical supplies to the Cuban doctors in Haiti.

We believe this is the best way to deliver aid effectively to Haiti.  Cuban doctors already have 11 solid years of helping Haiti with doctors and health professionals. After the earthquake they were there first, setting up a hospital beside the collapsed national hospital.

By noon on day 2 more medical teams arrived from Cuba and currently there are around 400 doctors and nurses and other technicians in eight separate field hospitals. Already over 13400 consultations, 1070 surgical interventions of which 550 were considered major surgeries have been performed and the need is ongoing with secondary infections and gangrene now appearing.

The U.S. blockade on Cuba impacts greatly on the cost of medical supplies to the Cuban doctors and despite this Cuba continues to supply free medical aid – the Cuban government funds the personnel – on a scale unmatched even by the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières.

The earthquakes in the Kashmir region of Pakistan in 2005 illustrates well the extent of this assistance when Cuban doctors were the only attending medical teams that set up field hospitals in the most hard to reach areas to the north. Often the most seriously ill patients are transported to Cuba for treatment including Vietnamese Kim Phuc, the little girl shown in the famous war photograph running naked along a road, her skin burned by napalm and some 19,000 adults and children from the three Soviet republics most affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986

The Norwegian Embassy in Cuba has signed an agreement with the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment (MINCEX) to donate five million Norwegian crowns (approximately US $885,000) as emergency aid to the Haitian people. The money will be used to buy and send medical equipment and supplies to the Cuban Health Brigade working in Haiti.

We strongly encourage you to follow the example of Norway and make a contribution from Australia.

Regards,

Elizabeth Hulm

Branch Secretary

0421 113 343

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CUBA, one of the world's few surviving communist nations, is quietly expanding relations in the Pacific region, and Canberra and Washington are said to be watching developments with concern.

Cuba has been flooding some poorer parts of the region with doctors and humanitarian workers since the tsunami tragedy in Indonesia on Boxing Day, 2004. Swathes of the Pacific, from Kiribati to East Timor, are becoming dependent on Cuban medical aid, and the Cubans appear to be winning hearts and minds. Following the Java earthquake in May, teams of doctors were quickly flown to affected areas.

MORE: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/impoverished-cuba-sends-doctors-around-the-globe-to-help-the-poor/2006/10/27/1161749315614.html

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