History 

Medical teaching in the province is well framed within the 45 years of existence of higher education in the territory, since since 1968, as a result of the proposals of the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, on January 8 of the same year on the Universalization of the University and given the dynamics of the development of Public Health, the project for the training of doctors is outlined, thus laying the foundations of this work and therefore of medical teaching in Camaguey. 

The first activities began in 1968 at the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Provincial Hospital in which premises were adapted for classrooms and a teaching laboratory in the basement of the building. Subsequently, the direction of the school passed to the Provincial Directorate of Public Health, at 157 Luaces street.The teaching staff was made up of doctors from Camagüey who assumed these functions as a revolutionary duty, counting on the valuable advice of illustrious University professors from Havana and Las Villas. 

The first seven Medicine students who came to study at this headquarters came from the University of Havana, which rotated through the specialties of Surgery, Medicine and Angiology, in addition to twelve other fourth-year students who were taught the subjects of Medicine and Surgery, which when they finished they returned to the University of Havana. In November of 1968, the educational horizon of the province widened, with the arrival of another twenty students who attended the fourth, fifth and sixth full years. Teaching was extended in 1969 to the Eduardo Agramonte Piña Pediatric Hospital, the Ana Betancourt de Mora Maternal and Child Hospital and the Amalia Simoni Surgical Clinic, in the latter only the rotation of respiratory diseases, especially tuberculosis, was carried out. In this period the consultancy from the University of Havana concludes and the responsibility for the programming and delivery of teaching falls entirely on the faculty of Camagüey. 

Enrollment increased in the 1970-1997 academic year, rising to 229 students from third to sixth year. In 1971, the 44 doctors who completed half their degree at our center graduate in 1971, where they acquired comprehensive political and clinical-surgical training. As methodologically we depended on the University of Las Villas, on February 17, 1972, Dr. Eustaquio Remedios, Vice Rector of Teaching at the University of Las Villas, was appointed the first Faculty of the Camagüeyana School of Medicine, then integrated by 5l teachers. By Law No. 1294 of May 8, 1975 of the Council of State, the University of Camagüey was created and made official, the first one created by the Revolution. 

Dr. Juan Vela Valdés was named its first Rector; the school then acquired the hierarchy of Faculty. In 1976, the teaching of Basic Biomedical Sciences began with a faculty of 7 professors in premises of the University of Camagüey, but its development required buildings, for which the construction of a four-storey building began on land adjacent to the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Provincial Hospital, which had classrooms, laboratories and premises for administrative units. The building was inaugurated in 1977. In this same year the teaching of the specialty of Stomatology began, with fourth-year students who were decentralized from the School of Stomatology of the Universidad de Oriente. On June 4, 1980, product of the development of Higher Education in the country and particularly of Medical Sciences, the Carlos J Finlay Higher Institute of Medical Sciences was created under ministerial resolution and in 2009, as part of a new nomenclature, it was named as University of Medical Sciences of Camagüey, in tune with the new conception and international ties. 

University Mission Statement

To fully train revolutionary professionals in Health Sciences, produce knowledge, technologies and technological innovations, develop university extension and enforce the study plans and programs of the careers and postgraduate modalities that it develops with the purpose of contributing to the teaching scenarios to the comprehensive training of human resources committed to the revolution. 

University Vision Statement

We are an institution that has been inserted in the transformations that are carried out in the National Health System, reaching leadership and contributing, in the results obtained in Public Health, Family Medicine, the role of the Office and the Polyclinic as basic institutions of the system . We train competent human resources, committed and unconditional to the Revolution and with a deep internationalist sense. 

Goals 

• Direct the comprehensive training process of university students, which guarantees them a solid political, ideological and social humanistic culture, as well as a high professional competence, to defend the Revolution in the field of ideas and fulfill any task entrusted to them , educated in a communist attitude towards work, social property, study and society; that they develop an anti-imperialist, internationalist, proletarian and patriotically socialist attitude. 

• Direct the implementation and development of the Marxist-Leninist training of cadres, teachers, students and other workers, as well as in the main master strategy on political and ideological work. 

• Implement and develop postgraduate academic training in coordination with the Central State Administration Bodies, the governments of the territories, professional associations and political and mass organizations and the continuous comprehensive improvement of university professionals with the constant improvement of the quality of the preparation, taking into consideration the increasing and continuous demands of science, technology and production, as well as the interests of culture and social progress. 

• Direct the comprehensive improvement of cadres, teachers, researchers, recent training graduates and workers. 

• Develop scientific research and technological innovation as an inherent element of higher education, carrying out scientific research work that contributes to the construction and development of socialist society, raising the scientific level of the cadres and essentially the quality of the teaching. 

• Implement the cadre policy and its reserves established by the country. 

• Contribute to the preparation and improvement of the cadres and their reserves of the territory in coordination with the Central State Administration Bodies and the territorial governments, in accordance with the policy outlined by the Party, the Government and the State. 

• Promote, disseminate and develop the influence and creative interaction of the higher education center in the social life of the country and the territory, through the extension of university culture and the dissemination of knowledge among the population. 

• Direct and control the system of admission to higher education in the province, in accordance with the policy outlined by the Government. 

• Promote and control the introduction of management techniques in the Central State Administration Bodies, the provincial administration council and the municipal administration councils, in accordance with the policy outlined by the Government. 

• Coordinate and control the activity of attention to foreign university students at the university. 

• Develop an economic culture based on the efficient use of material, human and financial resources in correspondence with the Cuban model.