HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 29(ACN) Just a few days before the 63rd anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez visited several scientific institutions that during this difficult year 2021 made significant contributions to the national health system and the fight against COVID-19.
His tour on Wednesday afternoon began at the Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV), where “in seven months an old worn-out house was transformed into a cheerful, welcoming and beautiful setting, which also symbolizes the prosperity that a state institution can and should achieve”.
Thus it was defined by its deputy director, Yury Valdés Balbín, in a small opening ceremony attended by the member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Party, Jorge Luis Broche Lorenzo; the president of the BIOCUBAFARMA business group, Eduardo Martínez Díaz; and the general director of the IFV, Vicente Vérez Bencomo, leader of the project that gave us the vaccines Soberanas.
Valdés Balbín explained that the purpose of having such a beautiful transformation today is to hail our Homeland and patriotism as the essence of an institution founded by Fidel; to raise the values and principles of Cuban science and its best example, the greatest of our scientists, Carlos J. Finlay; and to achieve all this in an advanced technological context, with the typical high standards of the global vaccine industry, which we have reached today, he said.
After praising the workers’ collectives who excelled in this work, the President walked around the modern building and praised its functionality and beauty. “It was a pleasure, on the eve of the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, to visit the recently remodeled headquarters of the Finlay Institute, a center at the forefront of the creation of vaccines of the Soberana line, which have contributed so successfully to the country’s fight against the pandemic,” he wrote. “Knowledge, commitment, wisdom, creative resistance and beauty concur here, and in 2022 we are going for more.”
Díaz-Canel also visited the Cuban Center for Neurosciences—the well-known CNEURO—where he learned from director Mitchell Valdés-Sosa about its current projects, including Ventipap, a non-invasive respiratory support system, already registered for use; a vagus nerve stimulator for the treatment of epilepsy which could predict the onset of seizures; a Cuban cochlear implant, “the most complex project we have undertaken,” said Valdés-Sosa; and studies of the Amylovis molecule in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
The President also toured a small plant where a nasal atomizer is under production to administer the vaccine candidate Mambisa.
Finally, Díaz-Canel visited the National Center for Scientific Research (CNIC) and its exhibition Con nosotros está Fidel (Fidel is here with us), which displays impressive photographs of the many times the Commander-in-Chief visited the institutions that today make up BIOCUBAFARMA.
While there, he inaugurated the important entity’s Central Archive, where its history of resistance, creativity and talent is now securely stored.