Nicaragua Decorates Cuban Medical Brigade

Managua, Oct 23. -President Daniel Ortega on Friday conferred the Ruben Dario Order of Cultural Independence to the "A Voice for All" Cuban Medical Brigade, which concluded a year of work in this capital and returns home on Saturday.

In a ceremony at the House of the People in Managua, the Nicaraguan statesman awarded Dr. Miladys Orraca, chief of the contingent of 65 Cuban physicians and health technicians, with a medal for the Order.

The Ruben Dario Order of Cultural Independence is the highest decoration Nicaragua grants to nationals and foreigners for their merits in culture, education, and the sciences.

In October 2009, the "A Voice for All" brigade started a psychosocial, pedagogical, and clinical/genetic study of people with disabilities in Nicaragua.

Brigade members toured practically the entire national territory over the past year, visiting 179,138 homes, most of them in remote places where a physician had never been before.

Ortega highlighted the Cuban people's solidarity and internationalist nature, and referred to the island as "the land of Marti, Fidel and Che," a land of heroic people like the Cuban Five, who are currently serving harsh sentences in the United States for fighting terrorism.

The decoration was created in the 1980s to pay tribute to Sandinista physician Martin Condega, who was tortured and murdered by counterrevolutionary forces. (Prensa Latina)