The doctor Rodrigo Álvarez Cambra, a figure very close to power in Cuba until his retirement, died this Thursday afternoon in Havana at the age of 88, reported the Ministry of Public Health without specifying the cause of his death.
The well-known surgeon, who directed the Frank País hospital for decades, will “be paid a posthumous tribute” at the center “to whom he dedicated his entire life,” added the Public Health statement, which also noted that the body of the The doctor “will be exposed at the Calzada y K Funeral Home” starting at eight o’clock today.
Considered by many to be the father of Orthopedics and Traumatology on the Island and a fundamental pillar in the recovery of dozens of athletes, the prestigious doctor was also a teacher and trained several generations of specialists. But above all he was one of the most exalted names by the official propaganda within Cuban medicine.
Álvarez Cambras had Saddam Hussein among his patients and was president of the Cuba-Iraq Friendship Society
In 2020, it became known that the doctor was eliminated from the annals of his specialty, something that generated a controversy in social networks. But the fall from grace of the most important face of Cuban medicine began in 2018 and sources close to Frank País then explained to 14ymedio that it was due to the “uncovering of an extensive network of corruption where there were surgeries that were performed and not declared to payments directly in the hand of the orthopedist for their services provided to politicians and celebrities.”
Álvarez Cambras had Saddam Hussein among his patients and was president of the Cuba-Iraq Friendship Society and, later, he led the Cuban-Arab Friendship Association. From his time in the shadow of the Iraqi dictator, the surgeon later recounted in an interview for the Russia Today channel in Spanish that in addition to his work as an orthopedist “he transferred messages between Fidel and Saddam Hussein.”
Eight presidents passed through his surgeon’s hands, including Rafael Correa for a knee operation in 2010, and Vladimir Putin awarded him the Medal of Honor and Friendship for his services to the Soviet wounded in the war in Afghanistan.
In addition, Dr. Rodrigo Álvarez Cambras participated in several internationalist missions. He went to the Congo as a guerrilla doctor in the Patricio Lumumba battalionthe second front commanded by Ernesto Che Guevara in the African country.
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