Vol. 72/No. 24      June 16, 2008

The head of the Henry Reeve Brigade, Dr. José Rodríguez, said the Cubans were willing to stay as long as necessary. Many of the volunteers have experience providing medical care after other disasters, including earthquakes in Pakistan and Peru and the tsunami in southeast Asia.

There are 35 doctors and paramedics in the Cuban contingent, which is named after Henry Reeve, an American who fought in Cuba’s first war of independence against Spain, reaching the rank of brigadier general. He died in battle in 1876.

The task faced is “monumental,” the Cuban daily Trabajadores reports, since there are 25,000 victims of the quake in hospitals in the region.

The China Daily online edition ran an article May 30 on the brigade with the headline “Language no barrier for caring doctors.”

The most popular doctor among the Chinese children in the hospital is Cuban pediatrician Rafael Suri, the China Daily reports. “I talk to them and try to restore their confidence in life,” Suri told the paper.

—S.G.