December 1, 2007– The community project Health for Our People (Luagu Hatuadi Waduheñu in the indigenous Garífuna language) dedicates the region’s first hospital on December 8, 2007 in a ceremony attended by MEDICC staff and other international and local partners. After more than a year constructing and equipping the hospital in Ciriboya, a remote coastal village in the Honduran Mosquitia, the doctors and staff of the First Garífuna Community Hospital of Honduras are ready to officially open their doors.

Through this project, launched by Garífuna graduates of Cuba’s Latin American Medical School (ELAM), the doctors of Luagu Hatuadi Waduheñu have treated over 20,000 patients from the Garífuna communities Cusuna, Punta Piedra, Limón, and Ciriboya since they first volunteered during their vacations from medical school in 2000.

These underserved communities had never before had regular access to health services, a dire reality that convinced the new doctors of the need for a permanent hospital staffed and run locally. Since the public health system hadn’t provided one, they built it, and now staff it themselves, along with Cuban physicians volunteering in the area. 

Support for the project came from the communities themselves, MEDICC, and other international partners including Global Links and members of the Central Labor Council of California. We congratulate the doctors and community on securing their hard-fought right to health care.

For more information:

• The initiators and doctors of the First Garífuna Hospital were featured in ¡Salud!, a feature documentary about Cuba’s quest for global health, now available for purchase.

• Cuba’s Latin American Medical School
  www.medicc.org/ns/index.php?s=10&p=0
  www.saludthefilm.net/ns/elam-fact-sheet.html

• Cuba Health Reports:
  Innovative Project Brings Permanent Medical Services to Honduran Mosquitia

• Global Links