Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: a 15 years old history

HISTORICAL
REVIEW ARTICLE

 

Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: a 15 years old history

 

Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: una historia de 15 años

 

 

Rosario Esteva Morales

Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de La Habana. La Habana, Cuba.

 

This paper is a translation to English of its original version, available on:
http://www.revhabanera.sld.cu/index.php/rhab/article/view/1681/1542

Fifteen years are lost in the longevity centuries in the History of Mankind. However, for the Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas, this time period actually means several years of uninterrupted development of scientific, professional, and research work whose results will be summarized in this article.

There was no better date for its foundation than January 28th, 2002 when we were celebrating the 149th Birth Anniversary of the most universal Cuban man who sang to love, nature, and life with his ardent verb. He was the man who had pleasant dreams and bitter truths; the one that proclaimed to the world the need to obtain the prized liberty for his country, and died for it in the threshold of a world that he had been its creator. In the centenary of his birth, he was the intellectual author of one of the most extremely important historical facts of our native country. We are referring to José Martí y Pérez, our Apostle, our National Hero.  

Today, another January 28, when we are commemorating the 15th Anniversary of the creation of the journal, we go back to the start date to realize what we have achieved until the present time, being conscious of the fact that we cannot summarize all the work carried out during these fifteen years in just a few pages.  Definitely, we intend to bring the work about historical aspects in order to show the tasks accomplished during all this time.      

We refer to a work not only attributed to the Editorial Committee, which has worked hard, faced tempests and obstacles to be successful, but also to a wide movement made up of health professionals such as advisors, assistants, and our collaborators. Among these collaborators we have teachers, scientists, and researchers in general who have trust this publication and have sent us their articles, research results, and studies to be admitted and published during these 15 years.

We appreciate their participation month after month, year after year.  Their works and articles have come to swell our journal since the publication of the first issue that January 28, 2002 when we were only editing and publishing two issues a year, number that was increasing in 2003 with 3 issues, and in 2004 with four ones until July 2014 when we began to publish six issues a year.

There were our collaborators who joined our work and facilitated that on July 2006, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment registered us in the Certification System of Scientific and Technical Publications, and on September 1st, 2008 we were recognized and admitted to the Scielo database.  In 2009, we became a member of the Redalyc System of Scientific Information of the Autonomous University of Mexico.

We are aware of the fact that the way has not been easy. However, we have always worked with an optimistic spirit, managing to negotiate all the obstacles that could emerge, always keeping in mind the quality of the publication.

This way, we have informed each author- with whom we have had professional relations- about the analysis of each detail of their works regarding writing, content, or approach.  In addition, we have always had the satisfaction of their understanding, since the intellectual and scientific level of the journal has always been our priority.  For all this, we have received the acquiescence of our participants, and we have earned their respect.

Besides, we consider that a clever criterion was the division of the articles by topic sessions, atypical concept in the biomedical journals, in which the Semblance and Historical Sessions have stood out.

The former one, allows us to know about the semblance of personalities (alive or deceased) of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana whose professional lives have gone along in a laudable, established, simple, and silent way, giving of their own all the knowledge and ethical values, which are transmitted in the formation of future graduates form Medical Sciences.  To all of them, our gratitude and endless tribute.

In the Historical Session, we have had the opportunity to show an approximation to the history of several relevant facts of Medicine in Cuba, which have resulted in a landmark and have left their traces in the development of Cuban Medical Science during all this time.  Many of them are unknown or commonly not known up to the present time.

We consider that we have not left any specialty unmentioned or unpublished in the different articles that the Editorial Committee of the journal accepts such as: results of original research, review articles, clinical case presentations, and letters to the editor. The contributions have either been sent by Cuban professionals or representatives of other countries such as Spain, Angola, Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia among others who, at the same time, have shown new techniques and procedures in Congresses, Symposia, and Seminars that have been held in our country and abroad, without excluding the teaching-learning process in the teaching area.  These works have been included in not a few published works, and have agreed with the conceptual objectives that we advocate in our publication. The works are closely and coincidentally linked to the worries of many professors in order to achieve a comprehensive formation of the future medical graduate in which the social, cultural, and scientific aspects are interweaved in an inalienable unit.

We all know this is the result of a true development of the Medical Sciences after the triumph of the Revolution, which took into consideration the legitimate social transformations that began in 1959, and made the advance of Medicine in Cuba possible, thus leading these transformation processes to an only one political, ideological, cultural, social, and humanistic bunch.

Now that it is true that we are commemorating the 15th Anniversary of this publication, we are conscious we most honor the person that has facilitated this improvement in the health area, which we enjoy in Cuba now.

In this extremely important commemoration, we could not forget our Commander-in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, who was the defender of all health efforts. He was the man who gave his impulse to all that has dealt with the evolution of Cuban Medicine -we can include the creation and implementation of all scientific publications that lends prestige to our country, thanks to the progress of the Medical Sciences-. He had an altruist thought for the internationalist collaboration carried out by our doctors who have treated people all over the world. This important staff of doctors integrate the so called "white coat army" who carry out the laudable task of saving lives even in the most intricate parts of the world, which was Fidel Castro´s past dream now turned into reality.

In this 15th Anniversary, we also devote this simple tribute to the man who is a paradigm in the Medical Sciences, whose example should become an incentive to our young students and future graduates: Ernesto Che Guevara, called "El Che" by all of us. Among the multiple features of his thought we can highlight his profound humanism, love, and desire to help the poorest social classes, and the most dispossessed.  This philanthropic thought motivates him to study Medicine, which arises from an exceptional life full of loads of anecdotes like the one the scientist Dr. Antonio Núñez Jiménez related when he arrived at San Pablo de Loreto leper colony on the banks of Amazonas River in Guatemala.  He said that, many years later, Isaías Silva, one of the leprous man who had his arm in a terrible condition because he was suffering from Hansen’s disease, was expecting his death. Then, Che arrived (the young Ernest, the new medical graduate). When he knew about the case, he decided to operate on him, even knowing that the prognosis was very poor, and taking the risk of getting the disease. Che not only operated on him and saved his life, but also gave him breakfast very early the next day.  In addition, Isaías said: "I was suffering for 10 years until Guevara came and cured me".

It was an irrefutable anecdote, a revealing one about a man who, years later, became the "Heroic Guerrilla", and later, a symbol of millions of human beings in the world.

We consider more than valid to offer him this historical tribute because his life, thought, and humanism have taken roots in the revolutionary process of the Cuban nation.

We do not intend to recount the commemoration of these 15 years as a simple chronological list.  Although it is an important compilation, it is necessary to go beyond this fact and suggest the significances of each epoch and the close social and cultural links, in which the Medical Sciences are not involved.   Because of all this, we consider it is possible to end this article in acknowledgment of the historical figures of this Revolution, and the education that can result in the comprehensive formation of the future health professionals.  We have the hope that they will be aware of the moral commitment that they acquired with the society and our country, whatever the careers linked to the Medical Sciences they may have chosen.

If we can help with our publications as a modest contribution to the comprehensive formation of the future generation of graduates from Medical Sciences, and offer the necessary tools to face the future challenges that they will encounter in the present times; contribute to promote the scientific and technical thought in the teaching-learning process of our universities; make a contribution to the general culture of graduates; edit and highlight the scientific cooperation with other peoples of the world that write  to the  journal to publish the results of their researches; achieve to share the same comprehensive-educative approach with this "rise of the university" as José Martí said.  If we have achieved all this with our effort, sense of responsibility, dedication, and professionalism for these 15 years of work of the Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas, then we believe that we can certainly feel satisfied in this 15th Anniversary because we are, and we will continue being our raison d’être.

 

SOURCES CONSULTED

Files of the Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas. 2002-2014.

Núñez Jiménez, Antonio. El Che en combate. La Habana, Fundación de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, 1996.

 

 

Received: Novembre 14, 2016.
Approved: December 5, 2016.

 

 

Rosario Esteva Morales. Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de La Habana. La Habana, Cuba.
E-mail: editorarh@infomed.sld.cu



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