Francisco Alberto Durán García

National Director of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba.

Durán grew up in the center of the hot city, on Santa Rita street, one block from the Padre Pico staircase, "a very well-known place in Santiago de Cuba with historical value because the events of November 30, 1956 took place in the area," he expresses.

Son of a psychiatric physician and a dentist and nephew of Eduardo García Lavandero, who was gunned down by the secret police on Vapor street in Havana. He studied medicine in Havana and graduated in 1975, in the so-called graduation of the First Congress of the Party, after completing studies at the Institute of Basic and Preclinical Sciences Victoria de Girón and at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of Calixto García hospital. He completed his internship (final year) in the specialty of Psychiatry, and while still in training he worked as such in the Army.

Later he did his social service in Camagüey and upon returning to Santiago de Cuba, he turned toward Epidemiology, a branch of Medicine that allows for executing more community actions, interventions in large populations.

"Right there in Santiago, on the very day I was being examined to receive my specialty degree, I was given the responsibility of the Aedes aegypti eradication campaign, in the midst of the 1981 dengue epidemic outbreak. Later I directed the Department of Disinfection and Vector Control, and subsequently, I assumed the direction of the AIDS Prevention and Control Program," he details.

Afterward he assumed the direction of the sanatorium in Santiago de Cuba for three years. "People were very afraid of the disease. More than once I had to explain things to doctors and nurses at a polyclinic or at the emergency room of a hospital because they were afraid to treat a person confirmed with HIV, and to the crew of an airplane that wasn't willing to depart because one of its passengers carried the virus. It was tough, but with patience and dedication the best results are achieved."

Later Durán served as rector of the University of Medical Sciences of Santiago de Cuba and it was a period in which teaching presented itself to him as one of the most complex aspects of the profession. Many still recall in his hometown the years in which he served as provincial health director.

As provincial health director "those were years in which I was responsible for my territory, and that's easy to say but it's not. The dengue epidemic again, in 1997, was a trial by fire, among others."

Upon being appointed vice minister of the area of Teaching and Research of Minsap (later called Medical Teaching), he moved to the capital in 2003. Then came his three-year stay in Angola which gave him the invaluable opportunity to "experience" what he had read or heard about, patients with cholera, malaria, among other diseases foreign to the Cuban context. He was head of the medical brigade and advisor to the health minister of Angola.

Durán was then, back in Havana, first vice director of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), "an institution of national, regional and international reference, and from which I later left to assume the direction of the Department of Communicable Diseases of Minsap."

Since 2014, for six years, he is director of Epidemiology of Minsap. "Today it is what demands from me almost 24 hours a day," he says about his responsibility which is not only with COVID-19, but also involves monitoring and control of programs to address tuberculosis, HIV, zoonotic diseases, leprosy, and that associated with International Health Control and immunization.

"For this, one has to work, which is what I have done most in my life and is what the specialists who accompany me in each of the areas of my department do daily," he affirms.

In 1976 he began his work activity at the EJT Military Hospital in Camagüey. In 1979 he joined the Provincial Hospital "Saturnino Lora", in Santiago de Cuba, until October 1980, when he began working at the Provincial Budgeted Unit of Hygiene and Epidemiology.

In 1987 he was promoted to Vice Director of the Provincial Center of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology of Santiago de Cuba.

In 1991 he directed the AIDS Sanatorium, in 1994 he was promoted to Rector of the Higher Institute of Medical Sciences of Santiago de Cuba and in 1996 he took the position of Provincial Health Director until 2014.

On April 27, 2018, within the closing activity of the VII Congress of Hygiene and Epidemiology and the International Convention of Public Health, Cuba Salud 2018, he was elected National Director of Epidemiology of Minsap.

He has participated in different scientific events and congresses. In 2001 he obtained the EXCELLENCE award in health work.

Since March 2020, he directed the television press conferences with daily updates on the progress of COVID-19 in Cuba.