During the closing session of the Congress on Biotechnology Havana 2009 that began last Monday in Havana with the presence of some 500 experts from 30 countries, including two Nobel Prize laureates, Fernandez compared this large foreign participation with the poor attendance of US scientists, many of whom were not allowed to travel to Cuba by the US Government.

The Cuban official recalled that Cuba produces 85% of the medicines its needs, which ratifies, he said, the validity of the program of biotechnological development initiated by the leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro in the early 1980s.

He added that Cuba produces eight out the 11 vaccines included in the national
immunization program such as the vaccine against Hepatitis B, while work is underway to produce therapeutic vaccines against cancer and another one against Hepatitis C.

Also present in the closing session were the Cuban Public Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer, and Ismael Clark, President of the Cuban Academy of Sciences.

Germans Robert Huber and Harald zur Hausen, winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1988) and Physiology and Medicine (2008), respectively, participated in the event and each of them offered key lectures.