During their August 3-4 tour, Marianniz Diaz and Iván Barreto López will speak about Cuba's ongoing drive to provide free public health care at home and to send volunteer health-care workers to many countries, from Latin America to the Pacific.

In particular, people in Auckland can learn about the successes of the country’s researchers in developing medicines and vaccines to combat diseases from dengue fever to Covid-19.

Cuba’s government and working people continue to defend these advances in spite of pressures wound ever tighter by the U.S.-led six-decade economic embargo.

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The two speakers are deeply involved in Cuba’s healthcare revolution.

Marrianniz Diaz was part of the scientific team that developed and tested vaccines against Covid. She works at the Centre for Molecular Immunology in Havana.

Iván Barreto López is a fellow leader of the Union of Young Communists, and represents the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples. He works closely with the many international medical students who study free in Cuba.

Schedule in Auckland:

On the morning of Thursday, August 3, the two young Cubans will be guests of the West Auckland-based Waipereira Trust.

At 6pm on Friday, August 4, they will speak at a public meeting in the Trades Hall building at 147 Great North Rd. The event and visit will be organised by the Cuba Friendship Society.

Diaz and Barreto López will also meet with academics involved in immunology at the University of Auckland School of Medicine and members of the Tertiary Education Union at Unitec.

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