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Press Kit: Press Releases

¡SALUD! Premieres in Latin America

Havana, Dec. 11--¡SALUD!, a documentary by Academy Award nominee Connie Field, premiered in Latin America here today at the 28th Festival of New Latin American Film. 

Filmed in Cuba, South Africa, The Gambia, Honduras and Venezuela, the cameras of ¡SALUD! reveal the human dimension of the global health crisis, and the complex challenges faced by developing nations struggling to provide decent health care.  The documentary examines Cuba’s example and its cooperation programs, in which 28,000 health professionals volunteer to meet emergencies and staff public health systems in 68 countries. ¡SALUD! tells their stories, and those of an array of young medical students among the thousands from the Americas, Africa and the Caribbean being trained by Cuba in an unprecedented effort to graduate 100,000 physicians committed to serve  the world’s poorest communities in the next decade.

Presenting the film, Gail Reed, journalist and producer of ¡SALUD!, noted: “We started out to make a film about Cuban cooperation in health, but we ended up making a film about a conflicting values, and the urgency of ensuring the right to health for everyone….As we filmed, we came face to face with the fact that many of the people before us were dying--of AIDS, of poverty, of neglect, of preventable diseases.  In the Americas alone, there are over 160 million people without adequate health care, 47 million of them  in the USA , not to mention sub-Saharan Africa. In a world with enough money, enough science for us all.”

Dr. Paul Farmer (Partners in Health and Harvard University Medical School) introduced the film at a special Harvard University showing in November, where ¡SALUD!t was received with a standing ovation. Said Farmer:  “¡SALUD! is compelling, upbeat and moving, a great tool for learning the lot there is to learn from Cuba."

Additional preview screenings have stirred excitement about ¡SALUD! in the USA and elsewhere.  After the showing at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Executive Director Dr. Georges Benjamin reflected: “¡SALUD! shows us that, regardless of economic constraints, health for all is possible…”. 

Dubbed a film especially important for young people, Jay Bhatt, President of the American Medical Students Association comments: “¡SALUD! should be required viewing for all medical students.”