COSTA RICA – International collaboration against cancer was the focus of the US First Lady’s visit to Costa Rica on Saturday, the final leg of her tour of Latin America, which took her first to Ecuador and Panama.
Jill Biden, along with her counterpart Signe Zeicate, visited the National Children’s Hospital in the Costa Rican capital of San Jose. There they led the signing of two collaborative agreements between the Central American country’s health authorities, the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Biden was a great promoter of the fight against cancer and recalled that the international mission against this disease aims to reduce the death rate from this disease by 50% over the next 25 years. But he reminded that to do this, you have to unite independently of political ideologies.
“No country can beat cancer alone, we must work together,” he said.
The National Children’s Hospital of Costa Rica has long ties to the United States. When John F. Kennedy became the first sitting US President to visit the country in 1963, he wrote a personal check to the hospital to buy new equipment.
Jill Biden’s tour of Latin America comes amid preparations for the Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Los Angeles in June.
At this meeting, the US government wants to create a space for regional understanding to deal with cross-border issues such as migration, but its organization is marred by the possible absence of many heads of state and the controversy that Washington did not want to go to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela too invite to meet