THOUGH restricted in movement by the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba-based Jamaican medical student Oraine Darren Lynch is biding his time, as he prepares for a final-round push towards a mission that will decide his future.

On the verge of completing six years of a seven-year programme that would see him acquiring his bachelor's degree in medicine and surgery, Lynch is already looking forward to working at the Spanish Town Hospital in the St Catherine parish capital, a place he has been using to familiarise himself with medical procedures over the last two summers, so that when he returns to Jamaica, the integration for him as a medical doctor would be easy.

“The Cubans try their best to make sure that we, as students, are well looked after and I want to express my gratitude to the Government and people for all that they have done,” Lynch stated.

So far, Lynch has studied at Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in the Cuban capital of Havana, where most of the scholarship students usually start, a place he did pre-med work for the first two years; then to University of Matanzas, 90 kilometres east of Havana for third year, and later to his present location of the Medical University of Las Tunas, in the east central region where he will be finishing up.

“Last year in the summer when I went to Jamaica over the summer and was doing the gynaecological rotation at Spanish Town Hospital, I made sure a saw the system.