The People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project Visit to Venezuela

[Joanne98]

In June, the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project visited Venezuela in order to assess the state of its healthcare system. The People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project models itself on the Cuban community-based approach to healthcare, and has established a project along those lines in a small neighborhood in Washington, DC. The visit was therefore directly relevant to its own project's goals. Netfa Freeman is an organizer with the organization, and he discusses here what the delegation saw in Venezuela.

Greg Elich: What led the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project to decide to send a delegation to Venezuela?

Netfa Freeman: Well Greg, there are a couple reasons for this. I guess I should start by mentioning that our project is inspired by and modeled after the Cuban healthcare system, particularly their door-to-door approach in providing for people's healthcare needs and how communities are involved in coming up with solutions. A couple of us have been to Cuba before, on unrelated occasions and we do intend to eventually take a project delegation there. But as you know the U.S. government imposes travel restrictions that make it much more challenging for U.S. citizens to go to Cuba. That's one reason. The other reason and probably the main reason is that Venezuela's situation more closely resembles the situation our project is up against, in the sense that Venezuela is still relatively new at their implementation of the Cuban healthcare model. Cuba already has 50 years under their belt and has already solved most if not all of the healthcare problems plaguing the U.S. Also Venezuela has a more industrialized economy than Cuba, with urban and community conditions that more closely resemble those we have in the District of Columbia.

So the direct answer to your question is that we decided to go to Venezuela to see how they were doing in implementing the Cuban healthcare model and to see what lessons there were for us in what we are trying to do with our project.

Elich: I'd like to come back to how the trip ties in with the project a bit later. But, for now, let's jump into the trip itself. What towns and areas did you visit? I assume you stopped in Caracas first. What did you see there?

Freeman: Yes, we actually stayed in Caracas at the Hotel Alba. The Alba is a state-run establishment that was once a Hilton Hotel but at some point the company abandoned it in opposition to Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution and the state had to take it over.

Caracas reminds me a little of downtown Manhattan. During the weekdays it's a very congested city. There we visited the Ministry of Health and met with people from the union of healthcare workers. I'm sorry I can't remember the official name of their union but they gave us a very detailed and compelling history of the movement for socialized medicine in Venezuela, which actually began in 1935. They made a lot of advances in this movement over the years until the so-called free trade agreements under the Clinton administration saw the privatization of things in the healthcare industry. This was followed by a rapid closing of public hospitals and the deterioration of both healthcare conditions and the rights of healthcare workers. Of course people began to organize, and once the new government led by Hugo Chavez came to power, their demands began to get a revolutionary response. This response being the enshrining of healthcare as a human right in the new Bolivarian Constitution, improvements in conditions for healthcare workers, and an invitation for Cuba to come help them with their new socialized system.

The meeting was very enlightening and the spirit and respect of the people we met was inspiring. They were very curious about and supportive of our project and allowed us to talk about the conditions of healthcare in the U.S. and in DC in particular. They treated us like very important people, which we saw as a mutual respect for fellow social justice activists.

We also visited the Dr. Gilberto Rodriguez Ochoa Children's Cardiac Hospital of Latin America, which if not in Caracas is right outside. This was a very remarkable hospital with state-of-the-art facilities. It was opened in 2006 and named after an icon in the movement for socialized medicine, a pioneer in the more recent movement that arose in response to the NAFTA-instigated decline in healthcare. Unfortunately Dr. Ochoa was killed in a car accident in 2002. Now the driving culture in Venezuela is another story, which we hope our sisters and brothers will eventually address. But this hospital was exceptionally clean. There is so much to say about it. In the patients' rooms there were mini sofas that unfolded into visitor beds so that parents could stay with their children in the hospital.

Venezuela has an estimated 4,500 children per year born with heart defects, with about 70 percent of them needing surgery. Even with eight other regional children's cardiovascular centers, only 600 children out of that 70 percent received surgery prior to the opening of the Ochoa Children's Cardiac Hospital. Now the number of those getting the surgery they need has increased by nearly 800 percent.

This includes 45 patients from Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. And in the same spirit of the Cuban healthcare missions, these patients are also treated free of charge, as if they were citizens of Venezuela.

The Ochoa hospital is a very big hospital and there were a lot of young people as technicians and physicians. A young doctor telling us about the blood bank was so enthusiastic and passionate about what he was describing to us. He couldn't have been over thirty years old. It was a humbling experience.

Elich: Did anyone at the Ministry of Health talk about the extent of domestic opposition they faced in undoing the damage done under the neoliberal approach? I imagine there must have been powerful interests that wanted to maintain the healthcare system as a profit-making enterprise rather than one that served the people.

Freeman: They touched on this a bit but the conversations we had with the Venezuelan and Cuban doctors of Mission Barrio Adentro had the most to say. They said that when they were trying to start this new initiative in health, a call was made for Venezuelan doctors to step up and help in impoverished areas of the country. Because most were orientated in the field of medicine from a capitalist framework, they weren't inclined to give their services without substantial personal gain. They described how many Venezuelan doctors become so because it is seen as a profession that makes a lot of money, and not because it is a profession that provides better quality of life for others.

Many people might tell themselves differently but if this were not true there wouldn't have been so few doctors answering the call. They made sure we understood that many Venezuelan doctors did respond but it was not enough to address the health disparities they were up against. So Venezuela turned to Cuba for help. Of course Cuba is very renowned for their healthcare missions in many other countries around the world.

They told us that many of the more capitalist-minded doctors and medical associations were overtly against the mission and actually organized to oppose it. They even went so far as to try slandering the Cuban doctors and spread talk of them being there to implant "the communism of Fidel Castro." Many people don't know that Cuban doctors actually have a prime directive that forbids them from interfering in the politics of the countries in which they're serving.

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http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4903