Cuba's exemplary health care system not the same after dissolution of Soviet Union

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
6/18/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Poor Caribbean nation had among the world's best health care systems

While poor and saddled with an outdated bureaucracy, Cuba's health care system was among the very best in the entire world. Every Cuban neighborhood had a doctor and clinic, and pharmaceuticals were practically free and easy to obtain. However - with the falloff the Soviet Union, and the recent economic crisis, Cuba is now struggling to regain its high medical standards.

Say what you will about Cuba's corrupt political system -- their health care system sends their doctors to Africa and other developing nations for emergency care.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - There is much that is very right about Cuban health care. Cuba has one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates, only slightly lower than that of the U.S. Life expectancy is 77.5 years, among the worlds highest. At one time there was one doctor for every 170 citizens - the highest patient-per-doctor ratio in the world.

The Cuban health care system works by emphasizing primary and preventative healthcare. With its limited resources, it is much easier and less expensive to prevent medical conditions than to cure.

Every square block is assigned a family doctor, who lives in a small, two-storey house in the neighborhood. He or she ensures that every child receives the proper vaccinations and that every pregnant woman has a monthly check-up, blood tests. If a patient needs more complex care, he or she is referred to a specialist at a public hospital or clinic.

After the subsidies from Soviet Russia ended and Cuba's economy went into a tailspin, nothing was the same again. There were serious shortages of medicine in the 1990s, from simple aspirin to more badly needed drugs.

Medicines that cannot be found at a pharmacy are easily bought on the black market. These black markets are fueled by doctors, nurses and cleaning staff smuggle the medicine out of the hospitals in a bid to make extra cash.

Medical attention remains free, but many Cuban patients bring their doctors food, money or other gifts to get to the front of the line or to guarantee an appointment for an X-ray, blood test or operation. Without money or gifts, the waiting time for all but emergency procedures can be long.

The Cuban health care system is neither fast nor efficient for two important reasons. There is a lack of financial resources, and the "export" of doctors, nurses and dentists to Venezuela in exchange for hard currency.

Thousands of Cuban doctors go to Venezuela to provide primary health care, their tour of duty lasts a minimum of two years and they are paid approximately $50 a month, plus expenses. In exchange, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez sends Cuba petrol, part of which can be sold for hard currency.

Many Cubans complain that top-level government and Communist Party officials have access to VIP health treatment, while ordinary people must queue from dawn for a routine test, with no guarantee that the allotted numbers will not run out before it is their turn.

� 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Keywords: Cuba, Venezuela, health care, doctors, Soviet Union, Fidel Castro

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1 - 4 of 4 Comments

Walter
10 months ago
Since you are reading these comments, I'll assume you found the article of interest. As a consumer of health care in the US and on occasion in Cuba, I want to suggest you continue to explore the web for more articles on Cuba's particular health care efforts. Do not be deterred by the angry voices that want only to paint one sided and negative views. Cuba like all countries, has a complex and unique history. When the revolution happened in 1959, few doctors served the countryside, and half the 6,000 doctors left. Now, even with many doctors serving in other countries such as Haiti, there are ten times as many doctors and more importantly, they are spread across the country and serve all the population for free. If someone tries to tell you Cuba was better off before the revolution, check their facts and sources. But Cuba stands out not because it is rich or perfect. It is neither, but as an ex-colony and poor country, it is trying. One good source to start with is http://www.medicc.org/ns/
Humberto Capiro
10 months ago
WIKILEAK DOCUMENT : Viewing cable 08HAVANA103, CUBAN HEALTHCARE: “AQUI NADA ES FACIL”-
In one Cuban hospital, patients had to bring their own light bulbs. In another, the staff used ``a primitive manual vacuum'' on a woman who had miscarried. In others, Cuban patients pay bribes to obtain better treatment.

Those and other observations by an unidentified nurse assigned to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana were included in a dispatch sent by the mission in January 2008 and made public this month by WikiLeaks.

Titled ``Cuban healthcare: Aquí Nada es Facil'' -- Nothing here is easy -- the cable offers a withering assessment by the nurse, officially a Foreign Service Health Practitioner, or FSHP, who already had lived in Cuba for 2 ½ years.

CLICK LINK BELOW FOR ORGINAL WIKILEAK DOCUMENT
http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/01/08HAVANA103.html
Humberto Capiro
10 months ago
According to Katharine Hirschfeld,( Assistant Professor- Department of Anthropology University of Oklahoma) criticizing the government is a crime in Cuba, and penalties are severe.[81] She noted that "Formally eliciting critical narratives about health care would be viewed as a criminal act both for me as a researcher, and for people who spoke openly with me".[81] According to Hirschfeld the Cuban Ministry of Health (MINSAP) sets statistical targets that are viewed as production quotas. The most guarded is infant mortality rate. The doctor is pressured to abort the pregnancy whenever screening shows that quotas are in danger.[81] Once a doctor decides to guard his quotas, patients have no right to refuse abortion.[81]
According to previous research about other socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, Marxist "revolutionary" efforts have included such practices as "deliberate manipulation of health statistics, aggressive political intrusion into health care, decision-making, criminalizing dissent, and other forms of authoritarian policing of the health sector designed to insure health changes reflect the (often utopian) predictions of Marxist theory".[81] These practices are well documented for the former Soviet Union and China.[81] Their existence was virtually unknown in the West during the Soviet era and Western social scientists cited favorable the health statistics supplied by the regimes in the USSR and China.[81] Social scientists did not look critically at the ways they were created and maintained by state power.[81]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba
Philip Boese, Albuquerque, NM
10 months ago
I was really impressed a few years ago seeing in Michael Moore's movie Sicko how easily they got good medical care in Cuba, much better than most in the USA get. One of his interlopers just walked in and got a dental implant at no cost. My wife and I have lost teeth and could greatly benefit from implants but we cannot afford a couple thousand dollars each to get them. We are middle class but struggling as we help support our adult children. It is really a crying shame that Americans are letting corporations with their superPac millions take control of our government so that things get better for corporate profits and worse for working people. Americans just weren't vigilant enough to see the corporate takeover of congress happening right before their eyes. Single payer would be good for Americans but not for insurance corporations. Both candidates serve corporations more than people so we have little to choose in this election. Jesus will come in the Father's time and I hope that's soon.

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