Compañeros Evo Morales & Hugo Chávez in Cuba THE presidents of the Republic of Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Hugo, Chávez Frías arrived in Cuba today, April 28, the first anniversary of the signing of agreements between Venezuela and Cuba to implement the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).Scheduled for this historic visit is the signing of documents to facilitate the membership of the Republic of Bolivia. Said documents equally include ideas proclaimed by President Evo Morales regarding People’s Trade Agreements (TCP). Alba is a model of integratin based on cooperatio solidarity and common will to advance to higher levels of development, to satisfy the needs and longings of the Latin American and Caribbean countries and to preserve their independence, sovereignty and identity.
On this visit to Cuba Presidents Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez will reaffirm the commitment of the three governments to continue working toward the integration of the brother nations of our continent and to strengthen bonds of friendship and solidarity that unite Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.
The people of Cuba, in a message sent by the National Assembly and the Council of State to Evo Morales, recognized that he as well as his people, some of the poorest and most exploited in the hemisphere, have ahead of them new and immense challenges, which will require maximum solidarity from Latin America and the world in order to face them.
In a round of debates, the Government of Cuba expressed its willingness to promote a program that would offer ophthalmological care to 5 million poor patients of Latin America and the Caribbean who, according to estimates, are in need of sight operations each year.
Likewise, Cuba expressed its willingness to cooperate immediately with the efforts of the new President to provide literacy courses to all his countrymen who do not know how to read or write.
In turn, Evo Morales, President-Elect of Bolivia by absolute majority, has expressed his decision to confront the poverty and the exploitation of this combative people.
Both countries, dedicated to the struggle for unity and integration among the fraternal peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and for the friendship and peace among all the peoples of the world, and taking preliminary steps, that will go into effect as soon the Bolivian leader assumes the Presidency of his country and with it the legal constitutional faculties of his position, agreed immediately to the first measures of cooperation to be applied after January 22, 2006:
FIRST: To create a Cuban-Bolivian non-profit entity that guarantees ophthalmologic operations free of charge and of high quality to all Bolivian citizens who lack ! the economic resources needed to pay the high cost of these services, thus each year preventing tens of thousands of poor Bolivians from losing their sight or suffering serious limitations that are many times incapacitating.
SECOND: Cuba will furnish the most advanced ophthalmological equipment and specialists required for the initial stage, which, with the support of the young Bolivian medical residents educated at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), and other doctors and residents from Bolivia and other countries, will offer meticulous attention to the Bolivian patients.
THIRD: Cuba will pay the salaries of these specialized personnel.
FOURTH: Bolivia will guarantee the necessary installations to provide the service, these could be medical facilities or buildings adapted for this use.
FIFTH: The National Ophthalmology Institute, recently equipped by Cuba for sight operations and staffed by specialized personnel and Bolivian medics and residents graduated from ELAM, who have already operated on 1,536 Bolivians, will obtain two additional surgery centers, one in Cochabamba and another in Santa Cruz. The Ophthalmology Center of La Paz will h! ave the capacity to operate on 100 patients daily, and the centers of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, 50 each, giving a total capacity of no less than 50,000 sight operations per year. These capabilities could increase if Bolivia decides to offer its ophthalmological service to poor patients of countries neighboring the centers.
SIXTH: Cuba offers Bolivia 5,000 medical school grants for specialists in General Integrated Medicine and other areas of Medical Science: 2000 in the first trimester of 2006, who are already receiving basic preparation in Cuba; 2000 in the second semester of this same year; and 1000 in the first trimester of 2007. In subsequent years the established quota will be renewed with new students. The 497 Bolivian youth already studying medicine at the Faculty of Medica! l Science in Cuba are not included in these grant figures.
SEVENTH: Cuba will provide Bolivia the experience, the didactic material and the technical means necessary for a literacy program that will cover the entire able population, empowering both countries to carry out the campaign in 30 months starting in July 2006.
EIGHTH: Cuba will share its energy saving experience with Bolivia.
NINTH: Cuba will provide maximum support in the development of sports in Bolivia in whatever disciplines are of interest to the people.
TENTH: Both parties will explore ways for the highest level of academic, scientific, and cultural exchange between the peoples of Bolivia and Cuba.
ELEVENTH: Other forms of beneficial and useful cooperation between both countries will be considered.
These programs will seek and will acc! ept international cooperation, although both countries commit to realizing them through their own means.
The present accord is the initiation of a process of integration based on the principals of solidarity and reciprocity.
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