29 Oct MEDICC and Global Links Send Hurricane Relief to Santiago, Cuba
October 29, 2012—Global Links and Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC), today launched a joint humanitarian campaign to send hurricane relief to Santiago, Cuba, the country’s second largest city, devastated by Hurricane Sandy on October 25th.
As the US eastern seaboard counts severe losses and begins recovery from Hurricane Sandy, Cubans are digging out from the same storm— with far fewer resources at their disposal. To restore power, 72 crews of linesmen work day and night. In the fields, farmers salvage the crops they can. Trucks and trains haul food, 4,000 tons of cement and some 84,000 sheets of roofing eastward to Santiago. The province—including Cuba’s second largest city of the same name and the country’s highest mountain range—was the hardest hit. Today, over one million people there struggle to pick up their homes and lives amidst the ruins.
MEDICC and Global Links, with the aid of the Pan American Health Organization, are sending medical supplies and equipment, chlorine tablets, hospital furnishings and critical medical books for the medical school to Santiago and other provinces directly hit by the storm. The two organizations have a strong history of successful humanitarian collaboration, including continuing support for building a sustainable public health system in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Global Links and MEDICC are accepting donations for this relief effort. You can help the people of Santiago recover, your donations giving them the extra courage it takes to face such a disaster. Go to MEDICC to donate online.
Global Links is a Pittsburgh-based not-for-profit medical relief and development organization dedicated to promoting environmental stewardship in the region, while improving the health of underserved people in resource-poor communities throughout the hemisphere and here at home. Global Links has provided more than $176 million in critical medical aid to developing nations since 1989. www.globallinks.org
MEDICC is a non-profit Oakland, California-based organization working since 1997 to enhance cooperation among the US, Cuban and global health communities aimed at better health outcomes and equity. MEDICC publishes MEDICC Review, the only peer-reviewed journal on Cuban health and medicine and produced the award-winning documentary ¡Salud! . MEDICC coordinates educational exchanges in Cuba for US health professionals and supports students and graduates of Havana’s Latin American Medical School. www.medicc.org