Field Notes from MEDICC: Interview with Dr Patrick Dely: Part I

Interview with Dr Patrick Dely: Part I, by Conner Gorry in Haiti, Field Notes from MEDICC--Official Blog of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba, April 5, 2010 Patrick Dely Haitian Graduate of the Latin American Medical School: “I want to see a Haiti where the kids go to school, where the adults have a job and when they leave their house they know they´ll come back and there will be food…People talk about the reconstruction of Haiti. But for me Haiti was never constructed. We have to talk about construction.”

Dr Patrick Dely spent his early childhood in St Michel L´Attalaye, a town in the central province of Artibonite where the environment was nearly exhausted and educational opportunities limited (to say the least). He spent his childhood in Haitian public schools – where up to 150 students share a classroom, oftentimes without a teacher – and always dreamed of becoming a doctor. But until a friend alerted him to the possibility of a scholarship to study medicine in Cuba, his future practicing medicine remained just that: a dream. Over ten years later, Dr Dely is a family doctor who was a few weeks short of obtaining his second specialty in epidemiology in Cuba when his country was devastated by the earthquake. I sat down with Dr Dely in the Cuban camp in central Port-au-Prince to hear more about this remarkable young man. More...