Ibrahim Rodríguez Cabrales

Dr. Ibrahim Rodríguez Cabrales, an outstanding surgeon and professor at the Faculty of Medical Sciences General Calixto García.

Ibrahim graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1962 from the University of Havana, and as a specialist of First Degree in General Surgery in 1965. He was categorized as an Instructor of Surgery from that same year and promoted to Assistant Professor in 1977.

In 1984 he achieved the category of Specialist of Second Degree in General Surgery. In 1986 he was awarded the teaching category of Full Professor, in recognition of his surgical experience accumulated over the years, and later the special teaching category of Consulting Professor. He had been a Master in Medical Education since 2013.

He was head of the Experimental Surgery section of the Surgery Department at his University Hospital "General Calixto García" during the years 1974-1976.

He always maintained his interest in research, and in his care and teaching activities he emphasized the importance of observation and listening skills in the clinical method for diagnosis in each patient.

His scientific works were part of research on teaching, care, or the history of medicine in our city. Author of teaching literature for undergraduate and graduate students in the specialty of surgery.

He worked in Vietnam during the years 1972 and 1973, and for his outstanding attitude he received several recognitions from that country. He also carried out internationalist missions in Honduras in 1974; in Angola 1976-1978; in Ethiopia 1983-1985; in Guinea Bissau 1988-1990.

During the 1990s he was the main professor of the General Surgery course for medicine and Bachelor's degree in nursing at the Faculty of Medical Sciences "General Calixto García", following the completion of his fifth internationalist mission.

For years, from the teaching perspective, he presided over the daily Shift Handover of his Surgery service. Even after he decided not to take the leading role in these shift handovers, he was present daily and his interventions on didactic methodological aspects, updates on medical conduct and scientific advances, as well as on the history of medicine and the history of the hospital in the different stages of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries were habitual.

He was a collaborating surgeon at Clinic 43 until his death.

Honorary Member of the Cuban Society of Surgery and Full Member of the Cuban Society of History of Medicine and the Bioethics Chair of the Faculty of Medical Sciences "General Calixto García". He participated in all scientific activities of the institution as a lecturer, speaker, delegate, panel member, and session chair.

Founder of the international societies: Caribbean Medical Association (AMECA); Ibero-Latin American Society of Surgery (SILAC) and member of the Latin American Federation of Surgeons (FELAC), in which he actively participated in national and international congresses, within and outside the country.

An educated, respectful, modest, simple, and solidary man, he left an indelible mark on the Surgery Service of the University Hospital "General Calixto García," to which he belonged for more than 5 decades, as well as at the hospital and Faculty level, since his professional, teaching, and civic practice was always an example of the Cuban physician dedicated to the beautiful task of practicing medicine unselfishly for all who needed it and sensitive to the suffering of others.

For his merits, he received several recognitions, among which the following stand out:
"Comandante Manuel Fajardo" Medal
Distinction for Cuban Education
Medal of Friendship from Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh Seal, on two occasions
Medal for the Struggle Against the Foreign Aggressor in Vietnam