Times of India.
January 22, 2001.
COMALAPA, El Salvador: A team of Cuban doctors has arrived in El Salvador to
help control diseases following its earthquake, just weeks after the two
countries exchanged bitter accusations.
The scope of Saturday's quake, which killed 681 people in El Salvador,
apparently outweighed the dispute that broke out in November after Cuban
President Fidel Castro accused the conservative government of harbouring
right-wing terrorists. Salvadoran officials in turn accused Cuba of having
meddled in the country's 1980-1992 civil war.
The 50 Cubans - who included pediatricians, gynaecologists, epidemiologists
and nurses - arrived on Friday at the Comalapa airport, just outside San
Salvador, aboard a Cubana airlines flight from Havana.
They were met by officials of the Public Health Ministry and taken to work
in refugee camps where tens of thousands of earthquake survivors are now living.
Earlier this year, another group of Cuban doctors worked in El Salvador to
help control an outbreak of dengue, a mosquito-borne fever.
El Salvador, which has no diplomatic relations with Cuba, has said it will
accept help offered by any country.
Nationwide, the earthquake caused an estimated one billion dollars in
damage, nearly half the annual budget in a country where the third-largest
source of revenue comes from Salvadorans living in the United States.
The second-largest source of foreign income is the coffee industry, which
suffered 1.6 million dollars in damage, the government said on Friday. The
country's largest industry is assembly-for-export factories.
The government said 15 percent of the country's coffee mills were damaged or
destroyed. (AP) | 