World Health Org Praises Cuba Achievements

[Mika]

Source: Escambray - Digital, newspaper of Sancti Spiritus province, Cuba.

Geneva (PL) - The World Health Organization recognized the achievements of Cuban public health, which is based on primary care and demonstrates extraordinary health indexes.

A bulletin released on the WHO web page reported that inhabitants enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world at 77. It also notes that in 2004 there were seven deaths per 100,000 children under the age of five.

The document explains that the main foundation of the Cuban health system relies on more than 450 policlinics in the country each attending from 30,000 to 60,000 persons. These institutions work in coordination with about 20 to 40 family doctor and nurse offices and are accredited in research and teaching of medical and nursing students as well as other fields of health, the report emphasizes.

The policlinics are undergoing large changes, many receiving renovations to add services that were only available in the hospitals. Currently most offer 22 services that include emergencies, rehabilitation, X rays, ultrasound, optometry, radiology, endoscopic tests, clinical laboratory, family planning, immunization and infant mother attention, diabetes and geriatrics, it adds.


Read more: http://www.escambray.cu/Eng/news/Cwho080507943.htm

---

Revolution is the profound conviction that there
is no force in the world capable of destroying
the force of truth and ideas.

[ckramer]

1. Michael Moore is right!

Watch the movie 'Sicko'.

[LynnTheDem]

2. CONGRATS, Cuba!

And US life expectancy just dropped. Again.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19826533.000-life-expectancy-dropping-in-some-parts-of-us.html

[Billy Burnett]

3. What? Cuba's doctors don't have a cure for that infectious socialism ...

.. rumor has it that they're spreading this infectious disease around the world.

;)

[pattmarty]

4. AND this is with the "economic blockade" of the past 45 yrs......

......just think if they didn't have the "forced poverty" what the system would look like. Probably about 1/10th the cost of our vastly shittier system.

[ckramer]

16. Isn't that amazing?

Let's start to admit the failure of U.S. style capitalism.

[pattmarty]

17. I think it is the "start". And we do in fact have something......

...to thank George Bush for, he couldn't have done a better job of showing all how greedy and fucked-up OUR form actually is.

[freedomnorth]

22. Che Guevaras daughter visited my town

She works as pediatric doctor in cuba. She said that worst thing she encountered were small children dying to easily curable sickness. When medicine from West could have saved lives but is not available because of Blockades.

[FatDave]

5. This should be a wake-up call

Is America ready to concede that communism is the better system for providing health care to its citizens? If not, we'd better come up with something fast.

[bossy22]

6. hmmm

i question the credibility of this source- a cuban news outlet

last time i checked there healthcare was rated worse than ours overall

there life expectancy according to the WHO is less than hours when it comes to females- 79 and 80

[Peace Patriot]

7. How come you don't question the credibility of OUR corporate news monopolies--

for NOT reporting on what the World Health Organization has said about the Cuban health system?

And are you also questioning the WHO's report?

Government policy and how societies organize themselves are not "black and white" issues, as Bushites and their echo chamber corporate press would like you to believe. Cuba can have one of the best health care systems in the world (including top quality free medical education), and it can have economic equality (everyone gets to eat, be educated, be housed, have useful work to do), while at the same time having a political system that most of us would not like. They have economic but not political democracy. We have economic fascism and once had political democracy, but the fascist corporates have pretty much done away with that (their 'coup de grace' being the rigged voting machines, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--a system that would make Stalin blush).

You seem to think that Cuba's successes in the field of health care need to be denied, because why? Here is the WHO saying it's true, and you counter their report with anecdotal statements like, "last time i checked there healthcare was rated worse than ours overall." 'Rated' by whom? And what does "last time i checked" mean? You visit Cuba? Got some other CREDIBLE report that says otherwise?

Why should we believe you? And the fact that only a Cuban news agency is reporting on the WHO findings does not discredit the findings. But it does discredit news agencies that DON'T report it, as I said above. What I suspect is that you don't like Cuba's political system, so you can't tolerate any news that they might be doing something right. You got any facts to back up your dissing of the WHO report?

[bossy22]

9. i never said i don't

[Mika]

18. Its interesting isn't it.

Seems so easy for armchair cold warriors to pipe in with a biased anti Cuba smear. Really, its a smear of the Cuban people in Cuba who work so hard to achieve such a standard with so little. They are amazing in that they have achieved a full social infrastructure that treats everyone equally well. This doesn't happen because they are forced by some brutal dictatorship, but yet some imagine that well trained, word class doctors, nurses, technicians, and educators in Cuba would have to be forced to exercise their beloved professions for the betterment of all. The love of their country, their sovereignty, and most of all their children is why Cuba has directed the spearhead of their ever expanding social system at care and a safe environment for their children. It took amazing sacrifice, especially during the hardest years, but along with a great desire to do so, they marshaled their meager resources to care for the least among them.


Viva Cuba!


-


"200 million children in the world
sleep in the streets
not one is Cuban√"

[Judi Lynn]

20. Love those great little faces! Why aren't they quaking in their boots, scared spitless about

living in a socialist country? According to certain radical "exiles," in Cuba the state owns the children, and sends them to work in the sugar cane fields, and subjects them to horrendous brainwashing, and might even send them to Siberia! (At least they used to make these idiotic charges, and MORE, before the end of the cold war with Russia.)

http://www.sabre.org.nyud.net:8090/archives/update98/cuba.gif

Poor, frightened little guys!

[Bigmack]

8. Check out the source

It will only take you minutes, not hours, to check out the original source of this information -http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/5/08-030508/en/index.html Ms Bigmack

[Judi Lynn]

10. Excellent! It takes less time than attempting to write a credible rebuttal of the original article!

It's not likely there will be any way to contradict the WHO regarding its own findings.

Thanks for providing that link.

[bossy22]

14. I wasnt clear what i was talking about

I was mainly postin a rebutall to the idea that the overall cuba's healthcare is better. There health system has some great achievments as can be seen in the WHO article.

This is not saying that i think our health system is good- no i think it needs alot of work but i don't like people who spread around the idea that cuba healthcare is "so much better than ours". there system at its core may be intrinsically better, but the healthcare overall is still better in the US than Cuba....now if the US adopted a cuban style of medicine- hey we could possibly be #1....or we could be #50.

[ronnie624]

19. And all of these accomplishments are achieved

even as the tiny nation fends off the bullying from the behemoth to its north.

Astonishing.

Where's our socialized medical care?

[Judi Lynn]

11. Help spread the truth about Cuba by posting a simple link to disprove this untrustworthy, sneaky bit

of commie lying!

Don't sit back and let the world fall victim to their tricks. Throw some light on the subject. It's your duty. Don't let us flail about in the dark while the commies get the best of us by writing lies for the gullible!

You can do it.

[ronnie624]

12. LOL! n/t

[Judi Lynn]

13. Here's an affirmation from an American source who may be trustworthy!

Cuba's remarkable commitment to health care


No world leader has been so consistently demonized for so long by so many successive U.S. administrations as Fidel Castro. It was therefore a surprise to read an article in the New England Journal of Medicine Dec. 23 issue entitled "Affirmative Action, Cuban Style."
It appears that despite our mindless embargo which includes access to medications and medical technology, Mr. Castro has invested heavily in his country's health care. This has resulted in:

• A doctor to patient ratio twice that in the U.S.
  
  
• Lower rates of infant mortality and a comparable life expectancy to ours.
  
  
• Since 1996, 7,100 Cuban physicians going to work in the world's poorest countries. (The proportional number from the U.S. would be 175,000 to match Cuba's humanitarian contribution.)
  
  
• At the Latin America School of Medicine in Havana, students from 27 countries and 60 ethnic groups are enrolled. The same free scholarships are now being offered to and accepted by students from poor and underprivileged areas in the United States. The only condition attached is that they return to practice in the same poverty-stricken areas from which they came.

As the editorialist at the New England Journal of Medicine remarks, "What an irony that poor Cuba is training doctors for rich America, engaging in affirmative action on our behalf and -- while blockaded by U.S. ships and sanctions -- spending its meager treasure to improve the health of U.S. citizens. Whether one considers this a cunning move by one of history's great chess players or an extraordinary gesture of civic generosity -- or a bit of both -- it should encourage us to re-examine our stalled efforts to achieve greater racial and ethnic parity in American medicine."

DR. STEWART KIRKALDY
Westport
Editor's note: Dr. Kirkaldy is a physician.

http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/03-05/03-15-05/a13op083.htm

[Judi Lynn]

15. A statement from the Harvard Public Health Review:

Perhaps best known for vintage cars, cigars, and communists, Cuba is also distinguished by something far more enticing to the students and staff of the Harvard School of Public Health--its health care system. The Cuban government assumes full fiscal and administrative responsibility for the health care needs of all its citizens, providing free preventive, curative, and rehabilitation services. This National Health System, as it's called, is an international success story and, for the last three years, a small group from the School has made its way down to this sunny island nation to learn more about what makes it tick. "It's good for people to see another system," says Richard Cash, senior lecturer in the School's Department of Population and International Health. "Seeing for yourself is far more important and to see what Cuba does with limited resources and to contrast it with our system and other systems is valuable. Everyone that has gone to Cuba has come away clearly educated by the process."

This March, Cash was joined in this educational experience by 12 MPH students. Roberta Gianfortoni, director for professional education at the School, has organized the trip since its inception and coordinated this year's excursion with Medical Education in Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC), a non-profit organization that specializes in offering elective experiences in Cuba to US and Canadian students in the health and medical sciences. The School's contingent traveled under a special license granted to the MEDICC. Over an eight-day stay in the Cuban capital of Havana, the group visited institutions such as the Ministry of Public Health, maternity hospitals, schools of medicine and public health, AIDS sanatoria, and community health clinics. "The objective is to look at an alternative system," says Gianfortoni. "It's an interesting model to study. Our students are going to go to both developed and underdeveloped countries so it's interesting to consider how Cuba's concepts and methods can translate to other parts of the world."

Socio-economic development is typically measured by health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy at birth. However, in Cuba, a nation beset by severely limited resources and political tensions both internal and external, these health markers are essentially the same as those in the United States and other parts of the industrialized world. Cuba also boasts the highest rate of public health service in Latin America and has one of the highest physician-to-population ratios in the world. Alone remarkable for a developing country, these feats are even more extraordinary considering the context of a US embargo that's been in effect since 1961. Because its access to traditional sources of financing is seriously hindered by the sanctions, which until rec- ently included all food and medicine, Cuba has received little foreign and humanitarian aid to maintain the vitality of its national programs. And herein lies the paradox of Cuba's health care system: because Cuba has so few resources, prevention has become the only affordable means of keeping its population healthy.

"I find Cuba's system to be very inspiring because it is so public health focused," says Tracy Rabin, who has made the Cuba trip twice. She traveled the first time as a student in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases; this year she participated as a research associate and program manager for the Program on Ethical Issues in International Health Research in the Department of Population and International Health. Her impressions are not an illusion: despite the economic difficulties of recent years, spending on public health in Cuba has increased steadily, which reflects the political will to maintain successes achieved in this area. An August 1960 law established the Ministry of Public Health as the highest authority responsible for health care. The same year, the Rural Social Medical Service was created, allowing Cuba to place doctors and nurses in the country's remotest areas to bring medical attention to inhabitants there.

More:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/review/review_summer_02/677cuba.html

[Mika]

21. Great article! Thanks for posting it, Judi.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

When are the contingent of DU's anti Cuba "experts" (who've never set foot on the island, nor done any research aside from US paid-for anti Cuba sources) going to chime in with their usual mantra - that mentioning anything positive about Cuba makes one a "Castro apologist" or "on Cuba's payroll"?

Just waiting for them to post such archaic hogwash about the WHO and now Harvard.



Learn From Cuba



-

[Judi Lynn]

23. Really appreciate reading your remarks from the World Bank, also.

It's deeply interesting imagining how the example of Cuba comes across to people like them. They seem very respectful, oddly enough. Bet it drives them nuts that Cuba is able to resist accepting their control, or devastating programs after being so needy so long, due to the embargo.

By the way, which town is that in your photo? Is it Havana, or one of the others?

[slackmaster]

24. Kudos to Cuba!

I hear their cigars are pretty good too.