If you ask one of Cuba's greatest scientists what he would have wanted to be when he was a child, "he would have said he wanted to be a baseball player. The thrill of hitting a home run in a stadium, Cubans carry it in our blood".

But since he was a child he was already reading and doing a lot of experiments. He had chemistry in his blood and the desire to dream. "I have always been someone who has defended on all stages that a Cuban is not inferior to anyone, whatever the nationality."

"Pioneer, discoverer, creator together with his team of a vaccine by chemical synthesis... A discovery like that would deserve a Nobel Prize", Arleen Rodriguez told him one day at the Round Table.

And Vicente Vérez Bencomo answered that no, he believes he does not deserve it. "He is an important discovery of our team, one of those who break new ground. Of those who open new paths".

But Vérez Bencomo and all the scientists behind the Cuban vaccines deserve, if possible, all the awards in the world, even if for them the smile of a child who returns to the classroom and meets his friends, more than a year later, and with a pinprick in the shoulder, is enough.

Tonight Cuba thanked them once again. In the protocol hall of the Council of State "El Laguito" in Havana, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the PCC and president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, presented the title of Hero of Labor of the Republic of Cuba to 10 eminent scientists behind the production of the three vaccines and the two Cuban vaccine candidates against covid-19.

The decoration was conferred to Gerardo Enrique Guillén Nieto, Eulogio Pimentel Vázquez, Marta Ayala Ávila, Vicente Guillermo Vérez Bencomo, Yury Valdés Balbín, Dagmar García Rivera, Belinda Sánchez Ramírez, Tammy Boggiano Ayo, Eduardo Ojito Magaz and Lorenzo Jorge Pérez Ávila.

Likewise, tonight in El Laguito, where Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz and Political Bureau member Roberto Morales Ojeda were also present, the "Lazaro Peña" Order of First Degree was awarded to 47 scientists linked to vaccines and Cuban science.

Dressed in gala attire in a hall of white lights with a ceremonial band, one goes back. To the night when Guillén received the first results of Abdala's Phase I clinical study; to the day when Dagmar said: "Soberana is more than a vaccine candidate, Soberana is a country"; and to Yury's vacations that never came.

A few days ago the Adelante newspaper asked Pimentel Vazquez what it means to him to be a Labor Hero. "As I said at the beginning, I have had the opportunity to have been in the right place at the right time, and to bring together a group of excellent, brilliant people and lead them to the results we have talked about. The image I have is as if it were a river, downstream, where many fish go as heroes of the work and throw the hook and fortuitously I am one of them. I interpret it and I will always internalize it as a recognition to the many people who have achieved these results", he answered.

Today, minutes before being decorated, the deputy director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV), Valdés Balbín, told us that he receives this title on behalf of many people. "We have been working very hard for a year and a half. We all came together in response to a call we received from the Homeland and we believe we responded to the challenge. We are bringing health to our people and our children, which is what moves us the most and makes us happy".

"Those of us who are going to be decorated feel that we are a small part of that great collective that turned the existing results into part of the fight against covid-19. Cigb is a collective hero of the work," added Marta Ayala Ávila, General Director of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Cigb).

Belinda Sánchez Ramírez, research director of the Center for Molecular Immunology (Cim), pointed out that this is the result of the work of "many people who are not here today. We are hundreds of people from various institutions working together. What we have to feel is the satisfaction that Cuban science responded to the call and the need we had".

Tin Cremata told Cubadebate some time ago: "I don't work, but I play in a gang, and every day I continue my childhood chase in the park". Today these 57 scientists are recognized for their work, but they do not work. Making vaccines, and saving, is their passion. 

( Taken from Cubadebate)