When Hurricane Mitch ravaged Central America, Cuba quickly sent medical teams, and followed that up with offers of more. About 200 Cuban doctors already are working in countries affected by the storm.
Cuba's decades-old policy of providing humanitarian aid to Third World countries was long overshadowed by its support for armed struggle, which ended with the Cold War at the start of this decade.
But now President Fidel Castro is making a broad proposal: offering to help improve the health care systems of Central America with more than 2,000 doctors and 5,000 medical scholarships over 10 years.
The idea is to slash the area's high infant mortality rate, saving tens of thousands of lives each year -- many more than the 10,000 officials say were lost in the hurricane.
``There is a hurricane worse than Mitch that is causing terrible human damage,'' Castro said in a weekend speech whose text was published Wednesday by the Communist Party daily Granma.
``What Cuba wants to show is that if a country of such limited material and economic resources can do something ... the industrialized world can do infinitely more,'' Castro said.
Indeed, other countries would have to help if Castro's plan is to go forward. He estimated it would require roughly $200 million in goods and medicine -- money that Cuba itself could not provide.
Castro suggested that European or Latin American nations might be able to help. He also calculated that if the United States were to dedicate to the plan one dollar out of each $1,250 it spends on defense, ``they could save 50,000 lives.''
While outside support is uncertain at best, the proposal is an example of a major thread in Cuban foreign policy: using the surplus of doctors created by its socialist system to win friends abroad.
Cuba has been sending doctors to underdeveloped nations and educating foreign doctors since the early 1960s. It even sent doctors to help Nicaragua and Peru, then hostile to Cuba, recover from earthquakes.
But Cuba's military support of rebel movements in Latin America and pro-Soviet governments in Africa alienated Cuba from many countries.
With the close of the Cold War, the soldiers have come home, Cuba has cut support to revolutionaries and stepped up doctor diplomacy -- with positive effects on Cuba's image.
Castro noted that Cuba has had as many as 22,000 foreign college students, medical and otherwise, on scholarships in the past.
``That also helps explain the solidarity of the Third World with Cuba,'' he said, adding: ``We did not do it for that. We did it because of our ideals and our feelings of solidarity and of internationalism.''
While many things in Cuba are in short supply, the country is flush with doctors.
When the current class graduates in August, Castro said Cuba's 11 million people will be served by 66,000 doctors. That is roughly one for every 170 people, one of the best ratios in the world.
The country already has 1,000 doctors working abroad, including more than 400 in South Africa. Many work in remote areas where health care has been hard to come by and other doctors are loathe to work -- such as the Mosquitia Indian area on Honduras' Atlantic coast.
Cuba also has room in its medical schools. Castro said the country has space for 30,000 medical students but has only about 15,000 now studying, including students from abroad.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press