For Immediate Release
May 19, 2010

Cañada Student Prepares to Study Medicine in Cuba

Abraham Vela of San Mateo will receive free tuition from the Cuban government in exchange for helping underserved communities.

Most Americans can’t imagine visiting Cuba. Abraham Vela has not only visited Cuba, but he’s preparing to enter medical school in the country.

Vela, 22, a graduate of Aragon High School and a San Mateo resident, has had his application to the Latin American School of Medicine approved and is now preparing to travel to New York this summer to go through the interview process. “Based on my application, they believe I have a good chance to be accepted,” Vela said.

The Latin American School of Medicine was founded in 1998, as Cuba’s response to the devastation of Hurricanes Mitch and Georges. According to the school’s website, Cuba understood that, if the poorest regions in the hemisphere were able to develop adequate healthcare infrastructures, they could save as many lives every year as had been lost in the hurricanes. The Cubans offered full scholarships to enroll at LASM to young people from the nations affected by the hurricanes – on the sole condition that, once they graduated, they would return to their home countries and offer low-cost health service in their own underserved communities.

The Latin American School of Medicine is a six-year program of study, which includes two years of basic sciences, three years of classwork and clinical rotations at accredited teaching hospitals, and a rotatory clinical internship in the sixth year. All classes are taught in Spanish; but a semester-long Spanish language intensive is offered to students who need it (prior to first year), along with a pre-med semester in which students can review pre-med sciences and improve their fluency in Spanish. All students study at the LASM campus for the first two years, and then go to another of Cuba's 21 medical schools, which are located throughout the island, to complete their studies.

Cuba is now offering students in the United States full-scholarship medical education at a world-class facility and Vela wants to take them up on the offer. “Cuba recognizes that millions of people in the U.S. have little or no access to affordable health care, and that many young people can’t afford to study medicine because of the costs.”

Applications to the school are administered by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors for Peace. “They work with the school and to apply you go through them,” Vela said.

Vela toured Cuban hospitals, clinics and psychological hospitals with other prospective students two years ago and this winter returned to Cuba on his own to get a better feel for the country. “Cuba is giving me an opportunity I can’t get in this country,” he said. “I’m excited to come back to the United States and serve underrepresented communities.”

He said his family was initially skeptical. “Now that I’ve traveled to Cuba twice and I’ve taken classes to learn more about the country, they are becoming more accepting,” he said.

Vela, who started his education at San Francisco State University but transferred to Cañada a year ago because he couldn’t get the classes he needed at SFSU, wants to become a primary care physician.

“There’s nowhere in the United States that I can go to medical school for free in exchange for helping my community,” he said. “If Cuba is willing to give me that opportunity, I’m willing to go.”

 

For more information, contact Robert Hood, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, at hoodr@smccd.edu or 306-3340