Abstract Dr Durán is a native of eastern Santiago de Cuba and his early medical career began in this mountainous region, where he also headed provincial prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. He went on to become rector of the Medical University of Santiago de Cuba and provincial health director. Later in Havana, Dr Durán was director of medical education and vice minister at the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP). Abroad, he served as advisor to Angola’s Minister of Health, and on his return, as deputy director of Cuba’s Pedro Kourí Tropical Medicine Institute (IPK). Dr Durán has been “battle-tested” over the years by his involvement in stemming dengue epidemics and other infectious disease outbreaks, good preparation for his current position as National Director of Epidemiology. Today, his is the voice and the face on the 11:00 AM briefing carried daily by Cuban television, reporting the latest data on the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic globally, in the Americas and in Cuba. This MEDICC Review interview took place on April 10, 2020, a month after the first three COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in Cuba (March 11, 2020).

She was a country girl from the northeastern Cuban province of Holguín, her father a farmer, her mother a teacher. Fast forward a few decades: Dr Lilliam Álvarez mastered mathematics, physics and nuclear science, finally specializing in numeric solutions to differential equations. She spent 20 years at the Cybernetics and Physics Institute in Havana, half that time as deputy director. For another eight years, she served as director of science in the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment. Full professor and senior researcher at the University of Havana, she is a member of the national academic authority that awards doctoral degrees in math and is Cuba’s ambassador to the International Mathematical Union. In 2000, she was inducted into the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, and in 2008, was elected a full member of the Third World Academy of Science (now The World Academy of Sciences). But over time, her rich bibliography, with titles the likes of A numerical technique to solve linear and non-linear singularly perturbed problems began to be peppered with other provocative gender-informed work: Women doing hard sciences in the Caribbean, Are Women Good for Math? and her 2011 book Ser mujer científica o morir en el intento (Be a Woman Scientist or Die Trying). Her focus on women in science—and their rights to belong in its leadership as well as its ranks—is also reflected in her activist approach internationally and in Cuba. She is a member of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World and heads its Cuban chapter. After her designation as a Distinguished Member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, she was elected Secretary in 2010 and also chairs its Commission on Women in Science. The Cuban Academy of Sciences was the right place to hear her story and to explore the way she sees women scientists in today’s Cuba—and the country she would like to see in the future.

A 2014 PAHO resolution that Cristian Morales helped formulate serves as a framework for the Americas’ governments to actively work towards health for all their people, incorporating this aim into national programs for sustainable development. This September, the UN General Assembly will sponsor a High-Level Meeting on Universal Health . . . a first in its history. In part two of MEDICC Review’s interview with Dr Morales, he outlines strategies he believes vital for transforming health systems to reach universal health—defined as coverage and access for all—and for turning words into action.

Cristian Morales, an economist by training, has dedicated his career to improving health and health equity in the Americas through his work with PAHO/WHO. This has taken him from floods and earthquakes in Haiti to PAHO’s Washington DC offices, where he was instrumental in achieving consensus on a resolution aiming for universal health—coverage plus access—approved by all governments in the Americas. Since 2015, he has served as PAHO/WHO Permanent Representative in Cuba and has recently been appointed to the analogous post in Mexico. At the end of his three years in Havana, MEDICC Review talked with Dr Morales about his experience, the Cuban health system, and the values it shares with the organization he represents. This is part one of the interview, the second part to be published in our January 2019 issue, in which we’ll talk more about the health system in Cuba itself, its achievements and also its challenges.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, but his family is Cuban. After 1959, they returned to the island, where Dr Mitchell Valdés received his medical degree at the University of Havana in 1972. He went on to study clinical neurophysiology, earning his PhD with a dissertation on the auditory system’s sensory physiology. When the Neuroscience Center opened (as part of western Havana’s Scientific Pole). he became its director, a post he holds today. Dr Valdés, a Distinguished Member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, is widely published and has collaborated with colleagues in dozens of countries, including the USA, UK, Italy and Holland. He is a full professor of clinical neurophysiology, sits on Cuba’s National Coordinating Group for Persons with Disabilities, and serves as an honorary professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. What brought me to his office is the set of symptoms reported by some two dozen US diplomats in Cuba and more recently in China as well. And the controversy surrounding what might be the root cause—a topic that has crossed the line from medicine into politics. MEDICC Review’s intent was to hear from Dr Valdés on the science pertinent to the controversy.