His "Barrio Adentro" scheme brought hundreds of Cuban medics to Venezuela to staff new health centres in some of the country's poorest neighbourhoods.

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Pero esta vez, yo estaba del otro lado de la cinta, de adentro, con el buzo manchado de sangre y con el cuerpo temblando.

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Under Barrio Adentro, tens of thousands of Cuban doctors are brought to work in Venezuela in exchange for Venezuelan oil to Cuba under preferential terms.

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His information, he said, came from his ally Fidel Castro: it is the Cuban medical mission, not the Venezuelan government, that keeps the books on Barrio Adentro.

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