“We should proclaim with all of our energies that we have the right to breath pure air, to drink uncontaminated water, to feed ourselves with healthy food….we have the right to be educated, to receive medical assistance, to be less poor when others are ever richer.”
The “Henry Reeve” Brigade has been created, and whatever tasks you undertake in any part of the world or our own homeland, you shall always bear the glorious distinction of having responded to the call to assistance our brothers and sisters in the United States, and that nation’s humblest children especially, with courage and dignity.
Let’s go forward, generous defenders of health and of life, winners over pain and death itself!
"I believe that, rather than weapons the peoples need ideas. They need a change from an inhumane, unsustainable global world that threatens life on the planet, to a just and humanitarian social order that offers humanity an opportunity to survive. The peoples need a world with a bit of drinking water and air to breathe where the necessary food is available and advanced technology can be used to produce housing, schools to educate the children, medicines to preserve human health and medical care indispensable to all, children, adolescents and the elderly".
“In Cuba, the social and human nightmare denounced in 1953, which gave rise to our struggle, had been left behind just a few years after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. Soon, there were no longer (…) undernourished, barefoot, parasite-ridden children, without schools or teachers, even if their schooling took place beneath the shade of a tree. They no longer died in massive numbers from hunger, disease, from lack of resources or medical care. No longer were the rural areas filled with unemployed men and women.”
“We will make use of computers, not to create weapons of mass destruction and exterminate people but to convey knowledge to other peoples. From the economic point of view, the development of the intelligence and conscience of our fellow citizens, made possible by the Revolution, allow us not only to aid those in most need at no cost to us, but also to export specialized services, including healthcare services, to countries that have more resources than our own. In this field, the United States will never be able to compete with Cuba.”
"I was thinking about our cooperative efforts, not only in Bolivia, but in Haiti, the Caribbean, several countries in Central America, South America, Africa and even distant Oceania, 20 thousand kilometers away. I also recalled the missions undertaken by the Henry Reeve Brigade, which responded to serious emergencies, traveling in our planes, transporting personnel and other resources. We are not far from reaching the figure of one million people annually operated on for sight problems, free of charge. Can the United States really compete with Cuba?"
"In Cuba, heart problems are the first cause of death, and most of patients die on the way to the hospital, they die because they did not receive immediate assistance within half an hour or one hour. They take one and a half hours, two hours, and by applying all relevant medications the blood clots can be removed. A high number of persons can be saved if they are assisted by an experienced professional and receive those medications, using equipment which help them to find out what is wrong with the patient. The diagnosis is not based only on the doctor’s judgment".
"What does the empire decide to do in order to compete with Cuba in our hemisphere? To deploy an enormous ship turned into a floating hospital that works ten days in each country. It can assist a number of people daily but it cannot solve a country's problems. It does not compensate for the brain-drain, and it cannot train the specialists who are needed so that real medical services may be offered on any day of the week and year.
"(...) that mental retardation is no dishonor to anyone, and in a society like ours, mentally retarded children should go to school and get prepared so that their lives could be as normal as possible. No one is to blame. Parents perhaps are if, for example, they fail to fully understand that during pregnancy, mothers-to-be should not drink alcohol. Parents could have some responsibility, but children have none. There is mild, moderate, severe, and deep mental retardation".
"Some ask themselves how it is possible for a small country with scarce resources to carry out tasks of such magnitude in fields as decisive as education and health, without which contemporary society is unthinkable".