Enter Operation Miracle, an idea born of Cuba and Venezuela's mutual plan to make Venezuela 100% literate for the first time, just like Cuba. During the first years of the new millennium, Cuban reading teachers in Caracas found that many older people couldn't learn to read because they couldn't see properly. If the country was to have 100% literacy, then everyone, including the old and infirm, needed the ability to see the words they were reading. And since most of the illiterate were from the poorer barrios, the eye surgery needed to be free of charge. No other solution was tenable.
According to a May 20, 2009, report by the BBC entitled, Cuba pushes its 'medical diplomacy', "'Fidel Castro always considered health a major priority so he asked us to devise a simple fast operation, a sort of miracle to restore people's sight,' said Dr Marcelino Rio, director of the Pando Ferrer hospital and head of Operation Miracle.
The Cubans have turned mass production eye operations into a fine art. PandoFerrerHospital alone can perform 300 operations a day. Treatments range from cataracts and glaucoma to corneal transplants. Most of the equipment is European and Asian; US companies cannot sell to Cuba because of the trade embargo. There are similar facilities throughout the island as well as dozens of eye surgery centers which the Cubans have opened across the Americas and parts of Africa."
In December, 2007, the program celebrated its million patient milestone as reported by Gabriel Davalos, "More than one million people from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa have recovered their vision thanks to the Operation Miracle free eye-surgery program started by Cuba...Dr. Elia Rosa Lemus Lago, a staff member of the Council of State, described the advanced ophthalmology technology that Cuba has acquired and put at the service of patients. Equipment she said offers high quality attention that has also benefited 150,000 Cubans.
Operation Miracle has taken on major proportions with 165 Cuban institutions taking part in one way or another. In all there is a network of 49 ophthalmologic centers with 82 operating rooms in 14 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Lemus noted." According to the article from BBC, by May, 2009, Operation Miracle has already helped more than 1.6 million people. And not one patient paid one thin dime.
But this isn't an isolated event, either. Cuba has long been sending doctors and medical staff to afflicted areas around the world and always for free. It has sent teams of thousands of doctors to Pakistan and China to help in their earthquake relief, flown teams to Central America and the Caribbean for their hurricane relief, and even offered to send 1,100 doctors to the US right after Katrina happened. The US, however, said it had no medical crisis to speak of and refused all medical and other help from Cuba. I wonder if the families of those who died right after Katrina happened would be in complete agreement with then President Bush and his outstanding FEMA director, Michael Brown.
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