Transcript of the Statement of Congressional Delegation Diaz Balart at Okhamadyt
(Kyiv Clinical Children's and Maternal Hospital)
December 1, 2005
Kyiv, Ukraine
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CONGRESSMAN DIAZ-BALART: We want to thank the staff and the doctors for the courtesy of having received us today and shown us the wonderful work that goes on here.
This is a small delegation from South Florida that includes Dr. Lipshultz, who is Chairman of Pediatrics at the University of Miami; Dianne Kube, who is Director of the Oncology Association of the United States; our dear friends who are really our experts on Ukraine and its multiple challenges -- The Children of Chornobyl Fund from the United States, this wonderful family. They are really our eyes and ears in addition to being our good friends. Sylvia Iriondo is a very successful businesswomen and a very respected human rights activist in Miami, and, of course even though she is standing back there because she is so humble, Under Secretary of State for the United States Paula Dobriansky.
We are here because our community wants to help. We want to develop links to be as helpful as we can to you as you continue to confront your many challenges in the years ahead. And so we want to think with you, with regard to how best we can be of help, whether that is helping in training of you health professionals to taking some children to Disney World -- the whole array, gamut or facets of how we can be of help -- that's how we want to help and work with you to accomplish.
Many of us in our community, -- for example, myself, Sylvia -- we were born in Cuba. So many of the challenges that you are facing in term of transition -- having achieved a transition to democracy and to achieving transitions to a market economy -- those are challenges that the country where we were born in still has before it. And so there is much that you are learning that you will be able to teach in the future. So, for many reasons, we admire you, we wish you well and we want to help.
Thank you very much.
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