Healthcare for the People: the Cuban Experience
EPTEMBER 11, 2020
by W. T. WHITNEY
If they are paying attention, progressives worldwide know that Cuba provides healthcare that saves lives and prevents disease more effectively than does the United States, its major capitalist enemy. They know that Cuban health workers have been caring for people throughout the global South and, during the Covid -19 pandemic, in Europe too. And the word is out that Cuba educates vast numbers of physicians for much of the world.
Many U.S. fans of Cubas Revolution know that, early on, care was extended to desperate rural areas of the island, that large number of new health workers were trained, that disease prevention was prioritized. They may know that healthcare planners pioneered in devising an exemplary primary medical care system. They had tried and abandoned versions of the so-called polyclinics, then arrived at the pathbreaking family doctor nurse program.
The polyclinics featured general practitioners, pediatricians, gynecologists, dentists, pediatricians, and sometimes psychologists working in one setting. Once the family doctor-nurse teams took responsibility for primary care, in 1984, the polyclinics were assigned consulting and teaching duties. Essential to the family doctor-nurse program was the creation of a new medical discipline, comprehensive general medicine, for which a new post-graduate, multi-year training program was devised.
Cuban Health Care, written by Don Fitz and recently published by Monthly Review Press, explores these developments and more. Fitz explains how healthcare was integrated into the community and how the notion of health itself came to include social, psychological, economic, and nutritional wellbeing. His book surveys Cubas highly successful management of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; the role of Cuban doctors and anti-apartheid soldiers in southern Africa; disaster relief and general healthcare provided in countries throughout the world, and medical training for tens of thousands of young people from Latin America, Africa, and even Asia and the United States. Fitz explores the origins and mission of Cubas Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) that between 2006 and 2019 provided training at no personal cost for 29,749 students from 115 nations.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/11/healthcare-for-the-people-the-cuban-experience/