HAVANA, Cuba. - A 45-man strong medical brigade that concludes its work in Peru had an official good-bye ceremony in the Cuban embassy in Lima, where the Peruvian President Ollanta Humala personally thanked them for their work.

Humala arrived to the embassy with his wife, First Lady Nadine Heredia, to express his people’s gratitude to the medical brigade that worked in the southern Ica region, according to Prensa Latina News Agency.

The president recalled that Cuba’s aids to Peru started 42 years ago when an earthquake hit on May 31, 1970, with great losses of human lives, and even then Cuban president Fidel Castro donated blood for the Peruvian victims of the cataclysm.

“You are part of that blood that Cuba continues giving the Peruvian people” Humala said and spoke of the two countries willingness to further strengthen their friendship relations. Health deputy Minister Percy Minaya also thanked the Cubans that arrived in Ica after an earthquake in August 2007.

He highlighted that the Cuban solidarity is an example to follow for those that aspire to have a integrated Latin America and said that during his work in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras he ran into Cuban medical brigades where he learnt of their altruistic work.

This brigade that President Humala said good-bye to worked in 11 Peruvian regions where it treated some 200 000 people and performed close 4000 surgeries, 70 percent of them major ones.