Cuba, South Africa Consolidate Medical, Educational Coop

Pretoria, Aug 19. -Cuba and South Africa consolidated in the last months their medical-educational cooperation and in the teaching sector as well, showing significant progress for mutual benefit.

Doctor Alex Carreras Pons, head of the collaboration delegation of the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) in South Africa, told Prensa Latina the advances of the links have been stable since the first agreement was signed in 1995.

Nearly 119 Cuban collaborators are currently in South Africa and 94 doctors will join the delegation next quarter to provide services on African soil, disclosed Carreras Pons.

Doctor Carreras Pons underlined that Cuba received over three million USD in 2012 for medical collaboration and the sale of biotechnology products.

Our country granted 60 scholarships to South Africans with few resources that wanted to attend medical school. Now Cuba grants 80 scholarships, but, since 2012, the agreement also included the self-financed opportunity, underlined the doctor.

Carreras Pons highlighted that Cuba offered South Africa to receive 1,000 young people per year that pay for their studies with reasonable tuitions, covered by their families or by the government of Pretoria.

In 2012, nearly 900 South African arrived in Havana and 915 already are sophomores, which represented an income equivalent to 10 million USD, noted the official.(PL)