The phone rings on July 9, 2004 and Dr. Belkys has already been in Saint Kitts and Nevis for months, the smallest country in the Americas.
The phone continues to ring until she picks up. Someone on the other end tells her that she must return to Cuba and to quickly pack her things, because she will be flying out that same evening, or the following morning at the latest.
The person on the other end doesn’t explain why.
When the phone rang it was already past 8pm.
At about 9pm, Belkys starts to pack up all her belongings. She thinks that something has happened at home, that someone is ill. Then she dismisses that idea and begins to think that she has committed some medical error, or made a mistake in one of the many eye surgeries she performs on a daily basis; that she’s going to be taken off the mission…
It’s Friday, July 9, 2004, and Fidel is meeting with a few doctors in the Ramón Pando Ferrer ophthalmologic hospital (commonly known as La Ceguera), in Marianao, Havana.
He arrives unexpectedly just after 7pm and Dr. Marcelino Ríos Torres, director general of the Pando Ferrer, calls together all the available doctors on rotation.
Gathered in a small office, Fidel asks them, almost like a favor, to operate on 50 Venezuelans suffering from cataracts. He tells them that they will arrive the following morning; that he trusts in their excellent abilities as doctors and knows that they will do a good job.
“Can you imagine, that he would ask us to do that!” Exclaims Marcelino Ríos Torres, 12 years later.
“For us it was an honor that Fidel came to the institution…and well, I went and got two colleagues: Deputy Director, Reinaldo Ríos and current head of microsurgery, Dr. Eneida who was on guard duty. And we all sat in a little office…”
Fidel holds a glass of water in his right hand. Seated, he drinks and puts the glass on a table. He looks at Marcelino, resting his head on his left hand.
Just over a meter away, Eneida Pérez Candelaria nervously observes all the details of his olive green uniform, high-top boots, grey hair and beard.
Eneida sits with her legs cross under a blue chair.
“None of us really knew why the Comandante had come. I remember that he began to talk about figures and other things. 50,700 surgeries. I told him that we perform 700 surgeries a week,” she states.
In 2004, Eneida was one of the seven Cuban ophthalmologists who had mastered the Blumenthal technique: a novel surgical procedure to treat cataracts.
Belkys Rodríguez Suárez had also learned the method, which is why when Fidel inquired about the seven, he sent for her to return from Saint Kitts and Nevis immediately.
July 10, 7am, the first 50 Venezuelan patients arrive at La Ceguera. An hour later the first operation is performed.
Saturday, July 10, Belkys Rodríguez Suárez arrives in Havana. On Monday, she joins the other six specialists on the surgical team.
By Monday afternoon the seven doctors have performed 90 surgical procedures.
“Fidel asked us if we could perform more operations. I responded: What do you mean more? And well, at that time we didn’t know…The thing is that it began to grow. The patients kept coming, and I said: This is never going to end.
“By more Fidel meant 50 patients a day. But we managed to treat up to 500 in just one day,” notes Ríos Torres.
“When the number of patients started to increase, we had to divide into two surgical teams. We went looking for the seven best ophthalmologists in the country, because the seven we had weren’t enough…”
The Blumenthal technique is composed of various stages: disinfect the operating area; apply anesthesia; make a four to six millimeter incision in the sclera (white of the eye). Move the cataracts toward the anterior chamber of the eye and remove it through the scleral incision. Clean the lens cap of any remnants which could have stuck to it…
“The first team,” states Ríos Torres “would come in at 7am, and could leave the operating theater any time in the early hours of the morning. A single surgeon would operate on 60 to 70 patients a day.”
… Next, apply hyaluronic acid in order to prevent serious injuries; introduce an inter-ocular lens through the incision (the lens enables light to pass through to the retina) and adjust; clean away any remnants and seal the incision…
In 2004, using this technique a cataract operation would take about 10-15 minutes.
In 2004, the price of the operation in New York was over 5,000 dollars.
By the end of September 2004, Mission Miracle had restored the sight of over 14,000 patients, free of charge.
“For us it was like a game, like a boot camp…It was early July and we were exhausted from a physical point of view, because we usually go on vacation in August, after working for a whole year. But we sportingly took on the challenge, with enthusiasm.”
Dr. Eneida recalls all of this in early July 2016, sitting with her legs crossed under a blue chair, in the office where the meeting with Fidel took place.
“We have thousands of stories. Parents who had never seen their children. Rare cases of children born with cataracts who had never seen their parents. Poor elderly people. Treating people without access to health services, and not those able to pay for it at any private institution.”
Belkys walks around the room as Eneida speaks. He sits on the very same table where Fidel placed his glass.
His cell phone rings. He answers, saying that he can’t talk right now.
”For us,” he states “it was something different. We improved as a group and even enjoyed living together, as they put us up in houses close by and provided us with everything we needed to operate…You didn’t know who the patient was and it didn’t matter. It was beautiful knowing that someone regained their sight as a result of something that had taken you 10-15 minutes.”
“We were also a lot younger then,” jokes Eneida. “Could you imagine if Mission Miracle was started right now?”
“We’d be done in.”
They laugh.
Dr. Juan Raúl Hernández Silva – one of the original seven ophthalmologists – arrives. He was the first specialist to operate on patients in Venezuela in 2005, when the first Mission Miracle Centers outside of Cuba were opened.
“It was lovely,” he states “It helped us to mature as doctors. Because, despite the fact that we were already experienced at that time, the intensity of the program was a professional challenge. It helped us to grow. Every display of love by a patient would motivate you to continue... “
“But we were so young!” Eneida states still laughing.
Maybe they aren’t aware that they are part of history, or perhaps they are, and history to them also seems like a training session.
Something which takes them 10-15 minutes and which another will never forget.
Mission Miracle: an example of humanism and solidarity
On July 9, on the initiative of Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, late president of Venezuela, Operation Miracle - a program providing comprehensive medical care to patients suffering from a variety of eye conditions - was founded.
According to figures provided by the Cuban Ophthalmology Institute, during its first year only Venezuelan patients were treated under the program, at the Ramón Pando Ferrer Hospital in Havana. Surgeries were also performed in Santiago de Cuba and Holguín.
In 2005, the program was extended to other Caribbean, Central and South American countries. Initially all patients traveled to Cuba to be treated, however in 2006 ophthalmology centers were set up in various nations, making treatment more readily available to those most in need.
In order to carry out the program modern technology was purchased and the island’s ophthalmology services underwent a restoration process. Many Cuban specialists, nurses, technicians and engineers were trained, while the Cuban Ophthalmology Faculty was also founded, from which over 600 specialists have graduated to date.
Operation Miracle was initially implemented in Cuba, where it has been gradually perfected at all levels of the healthcare system nationwide.
According to the report, today there are currently 65 ophthalmology centers, equipped with 93 operating theaters, in 18 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, providing treatment to people in 34 nations.
Soon two million surgeries will have been performed under what is now known as Mission Miracle, “a precedent in our history of ophthalmologic collaboration around the world, which makes this program another example of the internationalist character of our healthcare system,” noted Dr. Juan Raúl Hernández Silva, the first Cuban ophthalmologist to perform eye surgery in Venezuela in 2005.
