Cuba Is Good for Your Health

[Karmadillo]

https://zcomm.org/zcommentary/cuba-is-good-for-your-health/

Cuba Is Good for Your Health

By David Swanson
Feb 11, 2015

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Earlier today we visited the Latin American School of Medicine, which is now misnamed as it educates doctors from all over the world, not just Latin America. It began in 1998 by converting a former navy school into a medical school at which to give free education to students from Central America. From 2005 to 2014, the school has seen 24,486 students graduate.

Their education is totally free and begins with a 20-week course in the Spanish language. This is a world-standard medical school surrounded by palm trees and sports fields on the very edge of the Caribbean, and students who are qualified for pre-med school — which means two years of U.S. college — can come here and become doctors without paying a dime, and without going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt. The students do not then have to practice medicine in Cuba or do anything for Cuba, but rather are expected to return to their own countries and practice medicine where it is most needed.

Thus far 112 U.S. students have graduated, and 99 are currently enrolled. Some of them went with an aid “brigade” to Haiti. All of them, after graduating, have passed their U.S. exams back home. I spoke with Olive Albanese, a medical student from Madison, Wisconsin. I asked what she would do upon graduation. “We have a moral obligation,” she replied, “to work where it’s most needed.” She said she would go to a rural or Native American area that has no doctors and work there. She said that the U.S. government should be offering this same service to anyone who wants it, and that people who graduate with student debt will not serve those most in need.

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This organic farming cooperative on 25 acres east of Havana didn’t choose to go organic. Back in the 1990s, during the “special period” (meaning catastrophically bad period) nobody had fertilizer or other poisons. They couldn’t use them if they wanted to. Cuba lost 85% of its international trade when the Soviet Union broke up. So, Cubans learned to grow their own food, and learned to do so without chemicals, and learned to eat the things they grew. A meat-heavy diet began to incorporate a lot more vegetables.

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There are more elderly Cubans working on organic farms because Cubans are living longer (life expectancy of 79.9 years) and they are living longer, according to Salcines, at least in part because of organic food. Eliminating beef has improved Cubans’ health, he said. Biodiversity and beneficial insects and proper care for the soil replace fertilizers and pesticides, to everyone’s benefit. Thousands of minerals must be replaced in farmed soil, he said, and replacing just a few of them results in illnesses, diabetes, heart problems, and much else, including a lack of libido — not to mention more pests on the farm, which could be reduced by giving the plants proper nutrition. Even Cuba’s bees are reportedly alive and well.

Salcines says Cuba produces 1,020,000 tons of organic vegetables per year, 400 tons of them at Alamar in great variety and at a rate of five crops per year. Alamar also produces 40 tons of worm compost per year, using 80 tons of organic matter to do so.

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[hunter]

1. We ought to be paying attention to what works in Cuba.

High cost, high energy, big corporate controlled technology isn't always the best technology.