Fidel Ilizástigui Dupuy

Distinguished Internist. High-level medical educator. Example of a professional committed to his time, demanding teacher, cherished colleague. His extraordinary academic, social and revolutionary life is a faithful reflection of the main moments of higher education in medical sciences during the revolutionary period.

He was born at the Central San Antonio, today Central Manuel Tames, in the municipality of Jamaica, former province of Oriente, today Guantánamo. He completed Primary Education in public and private schools at the Central where he was born and Secondary Education at the school in Guantánamo. He completed Pre-University Education at his Institute of Secondary Education, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Sciences and Letters with the grade of Outstanding in the year 1944. In Primary, Secondary and Bachelor's levels, he would be First in his class. Before finishing the year he enrolls at the University of La Habana. And that same year he joins the Popular Socialist Party (PSP).

He was a Teaching Assistant in the Chair of Bacteriology, 1945-46 and in Medical Pathology with its Clinic, 1946-51. During these years, he integrates into political-student activities following the guidelines of the PSP, participating in the struggles for the improvement of the University, student strikes in support of the labor movement, political struggles against the governments of doctors Ramón Grau San Martín and Carlos Prío Socarrás and in campaigns organized in Cuba in favor of international peace.

He graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1951. Of the 36 courses taken, 30 were with Outstanding results and he obtained 9 ordinary awards. The degree exercises were rated as Outstanding.

Once graduated, he maintains his active participation in the political struggles of the University, at the General Hospital Calixto García and at the National Medical College. During that time, he was Secretary of the Association of Interns and Residents of the University Hospital (AMAI), from where he denounced and maintained a firm position against the military coup of March 10, 1952.

In those times he was an active collaborator of students and one of the trusted physicians of the Revolutionary Directorate and of the underground fighters of the Movement July 26, whom he attended on repeated occasions. For these reasons, his house was raided by members of the Bureau of Anti-Communist Repression (BRAC), in 1957. In 1958 he was arrested and confined in the Castillo del Príncipe and put at the disposal of the Emergency Court. That same year, he was detained again and taken to the offices of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM), where he was filed as a communist.

At the triumph of the Revolution on January 1, 1959, he joined the work with passion. From 1959 until 1961 he worked as Technical Advisor to the Military Health Service of the Rebel Army. He was mobilized as a doctor by the Army or Civil Defense in all moments and circumstances in which the Homeland was in danger, both during the invasion of Playa Girón and during the October Crisis.

He was a Member of the Executive Committee of the National Medical College from 1960 until its dissolution, on April 30, 1966, defending his positions in the fierce struggles that took place there.

After the dissolution of political parties, he enters the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI), where he was Secretary of Education of the nucleus of General Hospital Calixto García until the United Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS) was created, where he held the same responsibility. He later received recognition as a Founder of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) at the University of La Habana and its School of Medicine.

His professional life, and also social and political life, was always inseparably linked to his cherished General Hospital Calixto García. In 1956 he had been Head of the Service of the Veterans' Ward, he was also a doctor at the Student Clinic, located at the same center and worked simultaneously as an internal doctor at the Legal Charitable Center of Cuban Workers, where he was linked to the most advanced labor thought of the time, among whom stood out the director of the institution himself, Dr. Luis Díaz Soto.

From 1960 to 1968 he continued working as Head of the Internal Medicine Service of General Hospital Calixto García, combining this activity with multiple teaching duties at the School of Medicine and as an advisor at the newly created Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), in which he carries out new tasks along with his teaching work: he designs the National Plan for Hospital and University Reform, being part of the Technical Commission of University Hospitals, working intensively to achieve the best organization of the National Hospital Enrique Cabrera and drew up its hospital regulations, which served as a guide for the First Hospital Regulations.

He was an advisor for the external and internal organization of medical care units of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and in the organization and regulation of the military hospitals Carlos J. Finlay, of the National Revolutionary Police and Naval Luis Díaz Soto.

He also contributed significantly to the organization of Internal Medicine services in several provinces of the country and to the beginning of medical teaching in provincial surgical-clinical, pediatric and gyneco-obstetric hospitals, which constituted the founding nuclei of the Schools of Medicine that began to emerge from that moment: Holguín (1966), Camagüey (1967), Matanzas and Pinar del Río (1968).

In his capacity as Advisor to the Minister of Public Health, he directed in 1965 the Commission that organized and regulated Community Medicine, instituted in 1966 and in effect until 1983, when the Comprehensive Community Clinic emerged, with its Model of the Family Doctor and Nurse.

Between 1969 and 1971 he held the position of Assistant Teaching Director of the School of Medicine, and from 1971 to 1972, Head of its Department of Medical Pedagogy. During that period, he designed and implemented a new Plan of Medical Studies, which was named the "Integrated Plan", in 1970, which was extended throughout the country in 1974. Since the previous year he held the position of Second Vice-Rector of the University of La Habana, and in 1974, the Vice-Rectory for Postgraduate Education and International Relations.

In 1976 he was ratified as Full Professor of Internal Medicine by the then newly created Ministry of Higher Education (MES) and appointed Dean of the School of Medicine Number One —which had General Hospitals Calixto García and Comandante Manuel Fajardo as its main teaching settings— located in the historic hospital that was his nurturing mother. The following year he was appointed Teaching Vice-Rector of the University of Medical Sciences of La Habana, assuming a leading role in the development of the new Medical Studies program and in the programs of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics specialties, as a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the Ministry of Higher Education and President of the Permanent Commission of Education of Health Professors.

Later he assumed the role of coordinator and head of the team of professors who designed the training program for the Comprehensive General Medicine Specialist and developed the model of the Family Doctor and Nurse, for which he was appointed in 1982 as Vice-Rector of Plans, Programs and Development, a position he held until his death.

This work can be cataloged as the great work of his life, to which he devoted all his love, visiting the main centers of medical education in the world and reviewing the most advanced teaching programs to form one of his own. Its result was the development of the New Study Plan whose main objective is to graduate a Basic General Doctor.

In recognition of his fruitful intellectual work and his contributions to the development of Public Health and Cuban Medical Pedagogy, he was awarded the degree of Doctor in Medical Sciences in 1982.

In 1984 he was part of the MES Commission to analyze the design of the Study Plan for the specialty of Pharmacy, and in 1985 he was President of the Commission for the development of the design of the New Program of Study for the degree in Nursing. In 1987 he was President of the Commission that developed the design of the New Study Plan for the Dentistry program.

Throughout his professional teaching life he received and taught more than 100 postgraduate courses, published more than 40 articles in national and international scientific journals. Author of 17 brochures and co-author of 8 books that have served as basic texts in the different careers of health sciences.

Among the most relevant Decorations and Recognitions obtained are:
-Medal for the 250th Anniversary of the University of La Habana.
-Medal of Underground Fighter.
-"Carlos J. Finlay" Order.
-National "Frank País" Order.

He passed away in the city of La Habana on February 14, 2005, at the age of 80, as a result of the aftereffects of a cerebrovascular disease.