Cuba in the News- Alternative Medicine Blooms in Cuba

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Here's an excerpt about how Alternative Medicine is Blooming on the Island...

“Remember that in Cuba with the collapse of the Soviet Union, many things disappeared, and the pills disappeared too,” says Isis Salcines, who works on an organic farm in Havana that specializes in growing medicinal plants. “Many of the doctors had to [transition] the natural medicine.”

As doctors began focusing more on the use of traditional medicine, Cubans adapted as well. The medicinal benefits of certain plants were passed down from parents to children within the family, but such knowledge has made its way into more formal institutions like the education system.

“There’s actually a class that every kid here takes in elementary school, called ‘The World We Live In,’” says Yoandra Adelá, a general practitioner at a Havana hospital, through a translator. “In every elementary school you’re going to find a small greenhouse where kids plant and farm medicinal plants, and they are taught different uses they have as well as the healing properties of each one.”