Film to shed light on Cuban health system (not Sicko)

[Mika]

Film to shed light on Cuban health system
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070723/NEWS/707230306

Diane Stradling, a participant in the York Public Library's series on Cuban literature, will share her experiences in Cuba with photographs and a screening of the movie "Salud."

"Salud" examines Cuba, a cash-strapped country with what the BBC calls "one of the world's best health systems."

Stradling has traveled to Cuba twice under the auspices of Witness for Peace and visited the Latin American Medical School on the site of a former military base in Havana.

The school trains doctors from Latin America and other countries. Those who receive this free education commit to returning home to provide medical care for those who cannot afford it.

"Salud" shows the work of some 28,000 Cuban health-care professionals and some 30,000 international medical students in Cuba. Their stories show the complex realities confronting the movement to make health care a human right.

Stradling, of Portsmouth, said she is pleased with the opportunity to help people understand a part of Cuban life and to share her firsthand experience.

[Stargazer99]

1. This damn country which bows at the AMA ought

to do the same thing...train people to become doctors for free or miminal cost in exchange several years of serving the poor and low income is only compassionate but those who have homes, cars etc in the medical profession fight it. It is an evil thing to do forbid people health care because the medical professionals might not get every available buck. I don't see doctors or dentist standing in the Food Bank line. Cuba's solution would solve the problem of high expenses to become a doctor.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. We used to have a program like that for schoolteachers

When I was in college (late 1960s, early 1970s), there was a program called the National Defense Student Loan. It was available to anyone except the very wealthy at 2% interest. (Yeah, I know. Those were the days.)

But wait, there was more! If you taught school for five years, your loan principal was forgiven 50%, AND if you taught in a designated poverty area for five years, your loan was forgiven 100%.

The program disappeared some time during Nixon's second term, as did a lot of other education-based programs, such as the National Defense Foreign Language fellowships, free rides for graduate students studying non-European languages. My initial study of Japanese was funded by an NDFL.

[Mika]

3. Its amazing to think of just how far we've gone with the national repug plan.

This country seems like a hollow shell of its former self. :(


:hi: