Cuban Health Experts to Help Chicago's Poorest Communities

Cuban health experts will collaborate with local specialists in Chicago in order to deliver health care assessments to some of the city's most vulnerable communities, diplomatic sources from the Caribbean island announced Wednesday.

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The initiative is part of a collaborative project between the University of Illinois and Cuba's Ministry of Public Health, according to a press release from the Cuban embassy.

The work began Tuesday with three Cuban health professionals visiting Chicago. In the first part of the project, the visitors will stay in the city until Jan. 13 but will continue working on the project for around a year.

The project seeks to build cooperation that could contribute to improving key health indicators, focusing on maternal and childcare as well as cancer detection and prevention.

"We hope to work with Cuban specialists to identify the medical practices that have worked for them, while they could learn about our methods and experiences," Dr. Robert A. Winn, Associate Vice Chancellor for Community Health Practices and Director of the University of Illinois Cancer Center, said.

"We deliver health care that may be very different from how they operate, in the hopes that this exchange will lead to improved health for populations in both our countries," he added.

Cuba has a long history of medical internationalism and has trained more than 80,000 doctors from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the United States, Pakistan and China in the last 50 years for free.