U.S. Medical Students in Cuba

"American students must promise to return and practice in low-income U.S. communities"

(Transcript of the NPR broadcast April 5, 2004)
By Nick Miroff

Listen to this broadcast:
http://www.youthradio.org/international/mktplace040405_medical.shtml

It's not easy to get to Cuba these days with all the new U.S. travel restrictions. But some American students are going anyway. Their ticket? A free ride to medical school at Cuba's Latin American School of Medical Sciences. Youth Radio's Nick Miroff reports.

21 year-old LT Jamal Jones is on a tour of this newly renovated hospital in Havana, where he'll begin his internship this fall.

HE'S been studying medicine in Cuba for the past two and a half years- free of charge.

LT says he grew up "on the streets" in Gary, Indiana. His path to Cuba began when U.S. Congressional Black Caucus leaders spoke with Fidel Castro in 2000 about the lack of doctors in their districts. Castro responded by offering hundreds of medical scholarships to low-income, minority students. LT says he chose medicine when he was sick with the measles as a child, and there were no pediatricians in his predominantly African-American community.

LT (on tape) I just asked my mom "what do you call doctors that see little kids?" She said "a pediatrician". I said "that's what I want to be".

NICK By accepting the Cuban scholarships, the American students must promise to return and practice in low-income U.S. communities when they complete the six-year program. When he left for Havana, LT says he couldn't speak a word of Spanish.

LT (on tape) I'd never really known anything about Latin America at all, and I challenged my parents with it, and they thought there was some catch, and I really did too. I thought, you know, this is ridiculous-another country wants to take me, an inner-city kid with French braids, listening to Jay-Z, they want to turn me into a doctor.

NICK The program's detractors say there is a catch- that it's a subtle PR campaign by the Cuban government to put a charitable face on a repressive regime.

TIM (on tape) My name is Timothy Torrellas, I'm 20 years old. I came straight out of high school.

NICK Tim Torrellas says he chose Cuba over undergraduate work at Columbia and Cornell. His father didn't want him to go. While Tim has stayed the course and gradually adapted to life in Cuba, more than a dozen U.S. students have dropped out since the program started. Living conditions are better for the International students than they are for the Cuban students. They live and study for the first two years in separate facilities. But the school is still no Caribbean resort.

TIM (on tape) The dorm life is a little bit tight. There are eight of us in a room, I get along perfectly with them. It's just, you know, something you really get accustomed to."

NICK Classes are in Spanish, the students face weekly oral examinations from instructors, and there's no guarantee they'll become U.S. doctors. Like all medical students trained abroad, they'll have to pass a series of difficult U.S. licensing exams when they return. But Ayana Maitland, a 20-year-old from Brooklyn, says all the studying and the stress are worth it.

AYANA (on tape) In Cuba, I'm not a black medical student, I'm a medical student. So when I go into a hospital to see my patients, they're not going to be like, oh, it's a black female doctor, it's just a doctor. It feels good.

NICK The first class of U.S. medical students trained in Cuba is scheduled to graduate in 2007.

- "U.S. Medical Students in Cuba" was produced by Youth Radio's International Desk, in association with National Geographic.