When Alejandro Morales Curbelo was studying in Tahiche, he never imagined that he would end up training in the second hospital of reference in cancer research on the planet. He knew that he would opt for Science and his parents paved the way for him by enrolling him in two bilingual schools on the island, The British School Of Lanzarote and Colegio Arenas Internacional.
"They were clear that, at least, he had to learn a language,” explains Morales Curbelo after a day of work at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The young man born in Tinajo will live in New York for a month thanks to a training exchange.
Alejandro began to see himself as a doctor during high school. The push he needed to dedicate himself to the world of health was given to him by his aunt, a doctor in Gynecology in Lanzarote. According to this 30-year-old, she awakened his curiosity. After starting his academic life in Lanzarote, Alejandro studied medicine in Madrid.
After six years of studies, he returned to the Canary Islands to do his specialization. The Doctor Negrín Hospital, in Gran Canaria, was the center chosen by this tinajero to become a hematologist. To the time of studies he added a year of preparation for the Resident Internal Doctor exam.
Once the MIR was approved, he began the Hematology specialty, which lasts four years. During his instruction, Morales Curbelo took advantage of the opportunity that all resident doctors have to access external rotation. He got the contact of the head of Marrow Transplants at the Memorial, took a breath and requested a space to train.
“I am here for a month working with them, seeing how they work and learning from them,” he says from Manhattan. The maximum time that this center allows for external rotation students is one month, although he had requested more time. During that period he will benefit from the Observer Ship program in the Bone Marrow Transplant unit.
“This center is at the forefront of Hematology, many of the studies and discoveries that are made worldwide come from here,” explains the Canarian doctor. The Memorial Sloan Kettering is a center that welcomes patients from all over the planet, also where professionals from all over the world who come to train in New York live together.
“My idea is to work in Spain and specifically in the Canary Islands and if I can dedicate myself to the Transplant part, which is what I like,” he says about his job expectations. His next goal is not to return to his native island, but he does not rule out returning to Lanzarote in the more distant future.
His father was for a time the deputy director of a soft drink company in Lanzarote and his mother works as part of the ground crew of an airline at the airport. In his English training, Morales added several summers in camps in Germany.
For Morales, the way of working at the Doctor Negrín and the Memorial Sloan Center is similar. “I have not seen much difference in the way of guiding patients and in the way of working. The difference is that here they have an amount of resources and personnel that we do not have in Spain,” says Alejandro. “Here everything is private,” it cannot be compared with a public system.
In the area of Transplants in which Morales works, the entire system is private. However, this doctor does not know if there is social insurance for people without resources.
