Phaahla stressed in his speech the importance of this syllabus that allows young South Africans to graduate from medicine and stressed the duty of all graduates with their communities and rural areas.

They should return there to teach and show what they learned in Cuba, a country that he described as a stronghold of primary medicine. Phaahla congratulated them for the efforts they made living in a distant country with a different culture.

Antonio López, vice-rector of the Latin American School of Medicine, was in charge of the ceremony and the investiture of the robe to the graduates.

About 537 South Africans have graduated in Cuba in this program since early 1997, one in nursing and the other as physicians, the Cuban deputy public health minister noted.

At present, more than 2,900 students are studying in that program in Cuba and 76 are in the fifth year of the career in South Africa. In 2018, several hundred fourth-year students will return to South Africa to take their final course here before graduating, she said.

Academicians from the University of Durban, among them interim rector of that institution, R. Slotow, who welcomed the new physicians, and the director general of the Health Department, M.P. Matsoso, attended this ceremony. (PL)

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