Cuban Healthcare: A Potemkin Village

[SethG]

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday where they counter a PBS special (airing soon or already aired) on Cuban healthcare. They used some astonishing language in describing the rumor that most Cuban doctors are sent to venezuela to earn hard currency for the Cuban government.

Not sure if anyone else saw that article, here's some interesting quotes:

"In his memoir covering four years in Cuba as a correspondent for Spanish Television, Vicente Botín tells about a Havana woman who was frustrated by the doctor shortage in the country. She hung a sheet on her balcony with the words "trade me to Venezuela." When the police arrived she told them: "Look, compañeros, I'm as revolutionary as the next guy, but if you want to see a Cuban doctor, you have to go to Venezuela.""

".... the one about the Cuban whose notice of his glaucoma operation arrived in 2005, three years after he died and five years after he had requested it. Nor was there any coverage of the town Mr. Botín writes about close to the city of Holguín, that in 2006 had one doctor serving five clinics treating 600 families."

"...pulls back the curtain on "the Potemkin village" that foreigners see on official visits to Cuba. Behind the façade is desperate want. Food, water, transportation, access to health care, electricity, soap and toilet paper are all hard to come by."

"On Nov. 29, in the city of Santa Clara, hundreds of students launched a spontaneous protest when they were denied access to a televised soccer match they had paid to watch. What began as a demand for refunds soon turned to shouts of "freedom," "down with Fidel" and "down with socialism," according to press reports."

"In 2006, Mr. Botín says, a government minister admitted that 75.5% of the water pipes in Havana were "unusable" and "recognized that 60% of pumped water was lost before it made it to consumers." To "fix" the problem, the city began providing water in each neighborhood only on certain days. Havana water is also notoriously contaminated. Foreigners drink only the bottled stuff, which Cubans can't afford. In the rest of the country the quality and quantity of the water supply is even less reliable."

"Mr. Suarez also reported that, according to Ms. Reed, Cuba is suffering an "embargo of medicine." But there is no embargo on food or medicine. The problem is that the government lacks the money to pay for new medicines that are protected under patent."

[Montaigut]

Information out of context or in vacuum is not very useful as is the case of this WSJ article.

Here is some food for thought:

WHO Health Organization Ranking (not reported after 2000)

- Canada (my country) ranks 30th, the USA ranks 37th and Cuba ranks 39th.

WHO Health Performance Rank (1997 estimates) as based on: level of health, overall health system performance, responsiveness, fairness in financial contribution, overall goal attainment, health expenditure per capita:

- Canada ranks 35th, Cuba ranks 36th and the USA ranks 72nd.

Seems to me like there is room for improvement in all cases.

[SethG]

Information out of context or in vacuum is not very useful as is the case of this WSJ article.

Here is some food for thought:

WHO Health Organization Ranking (not reported after 2000)

- Canada (my country) ranks 30th, the USA ranks 37th and Cuba ranks 39th.

WHO Health Performance Rank (1997 estimates) as based on: level of health, overall health system performance, responsiveness, fairness in financial contribution, overall goal attainment, health expenditure per capita:

- Canada ranks 35th, Cuba ranks 36th and the USA ranks 72nd.

Seems to me like there is room for improvement in all cases.

I wonder if WHO data is based on data submitted by the government or field data collected by researchers? For example, I can believe the US is 72nd, but have a hard time believing Canada and Cuba are on par because Canada has the same type of system but 10X the capital. Just a thought.

[Montaigut]

Here is a link to the WHO 2000 Report (in case you're having trouble sleeping tonight!)

www.who.int/whr/en/whr_00en.pdf

Enjoy!

[puros71]

Heres the debated pbs piece

[El Presidente]

1. There are no shortage of general doctors in Havana or Cuba generally.

2. Surgeons are in short supply as are equipment and beds.

3. Point 2 has lead to massive resentment with thte populace believing foreighners are being treated before Cuban nationals (in many cases true).

4. There is no well maintained water infrastructure in Havana. There is no well maintained infrastructure of any type.

5. 3 year waiting list for non urgent eye surgery here in Oz and we are regarded as the best public health care system in the world.

5. Students in the US/AUS/Canada/Berlin march and riot as anarchists shouting down their governments.

One of the dumbest pieces of reporting I have seen

[Ken Gargett]

1. There are no shortage of general doctors in Havana or Cuba generally.

2. Surgeons are in short supply as are equipment and beds.

3. Point 2 has lead to massive resentment with thte populace believing foreighners are being treated before Cuban nationals (in many cases true).

4. There is no well maintained water infrastructure in Havana. There is no well maintained infrastructure of any type.

5. 3 year waiting list for non urgent eye surgery here in Oz and we are regarded as the best public health care system in the world.

5. Students in the US/AUS/Canada/Berlin march and riot as anarchists shouting down their governments.

One of the dumbest pieces of reporting I have seen

agree with what rob has here.

re the bloke getting his op after he was dead, don't forget that our own glorious government gave out stimulus payments in the GFC to dead people and my own brain dead council, when i needed a tree that was verging on collapse removed (as it was near power lines, the power company lops the top bit and the council gets rid of the bottom half), organised to remove the bottom half of the tree a week before the electricity people were cutting down the top half.

morons in bureaucracy are no worse in cuba than they are anywhere.

[coneatty]

Just curious...did the WHO have a vote in the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of years ago?

[puros71]

Here is Saurez response: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/1...uba-series.html

[El Presidente]

Here is Saurez response: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/1...uba-series.html

A reporter/presenter knows he is in trouble when he has to publicly defend himself.

Overall I found his series (from what I have seen) to be in the main pap with about as much investigatory zeal as the catholic church investigating one of its own.

However compared to the series presented by the BBC moron Matt Frei earlier this year......Suarez is Woodward and Bernstein material!

[puros71]

http://thehavananote.com/2011/01/pbs_news_...t_out_over_cuba

About two weeks ago, the PBS Newshour aired a three-part series on Cuba: its economic conditions and prospects for changes, its medical care and philosophy, and its medical diplomacy around the world. I have to admit, I only got around to reading the transcript from the first installment, before the holiday madness took over.

When Mary Anastasia O’Grady, from the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, blasted the series, calling it a “fairy tale,” I paid little heed. O’Grady’s polemical attacks on anyone with whom she disagrees are as predictable as they are uninteresting. But then, I came across this piqued response from PBS’s Ray Suarez, the correspondent who filed the stories, and decided it was time to watch and read everything I’d missed:

Cuba -- its past, present and future -- sits comfortably in a category, along with abortion, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and now global climate change, of difficult stories to tell. No matter what the reporter writes, he or she is going to make somebody mad.

In her op-ed critique of my recent series of reports from Cuba, Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes, "it was hard to recognize the country Mr. Suarez claimed to be describing."

In reality, it was hard to recognize my series of reports from Ms. O'Grady's description.

Suarez then details the various interviews he conducted on the island which presented views critical of the Cuban government, or in contrast to the “official” view, from a frustrated local barber to a well known former political prisoner, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who had this to say:

“The Revolution is going backwards . . . . our dreams have become a nightmare.”

After watching the full series, I found the piece to be pretty well balanced, and importantly, informative. Cuba is a country of contradictions. It’s difficult to experience from your armchair the layers and shifting nature of Cuban reality, and the PBS piece does a good job of conveying that. An uninitiated watcher should have come away with the impression that Cuba’s approach to the social safety net created some safety that Americans just don’t have, but that it’s not sustainable, and that it comes with a heavy price.

But what about a reader like O’Grady? Suarez thinks he knows what happens:

"It's an old newsroom truism that if you're making both sides angry you probably got it about right. I have always found that old saw less than satisfying. What I've found over long years of reporting is that people with a strong set of beliefs about a long-standing controversy dismiss all interview subjects and facts they agree with as self-evident. All somebody who has taken a side is looking for is the stuff they don't agree with. The thinking goes: if people I don't agree with are included in the reporting, then everything else the reporter writes must be wrong, too.

That kind of intellectual laziness is problem enough from anyone. Coming from a member of an editorial board of one of the best-read newspapers in the country, it's horrifying."

I was frankly surprised by how many critical comments Suarez's response engendered. Certainly readers appreciated his points, but numerous commenters insisted that Suarez wasn't reporting the real Cuba and wanted their money back. (Actually, the coverage that stirred up so much anger, about Cuba's medical system and its medical diplomacy, appears to have been funded not by the taxpayers, but by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.)

To me, the salience of the PBS piece, and thus our focus, is not which side you take in this never-ending ideological conflict. Rather, it should be on the changes currently underway on the island. Rafael Hernandez, editor of the noted Cuban magazine Temas, believes that the changes are inevitable, but he's not convinced that full blown capitalism is the answer. Carlos Saladrigas, based in Miami, hopes Cuba's leaders will do more than tinker with the system, otherwise he fears the economy is in "freefall". No matter how far the changes will eventually go, CUNY professor Katrin Hansing believes the gradual elimination of some of Cuba's longtime social safety net guarantees spell a big psychologicial adjustment for the population. Isn't that adjustment and Cuba's immediate future - rather than who was right and who was wrong in the past - where we should really put our focus?

[fred170]

Hello mates, being that I visit Cuba and have had the opportunity to use the cuban medical system I can say the following:

Cuban doctors and the cuban medical system, in my opinion, ranks pretty good and make do with what they have as far as resources.

Cuba sends medical doctors to other parts of the world ( offered aid to the USA during Katrina, but Bush said no) in times of medical needs and natural disaster (Haiti, Chile)

Cuba feels that it is the responsibility of all medical doctors in Cuba to spread and share the mission of the cuban revolution while abroad.

Not every doctor in Cuba agrees with the Cuban Revolution, but do thank the revolution for making their medical studies free of cost.

US holds multiple patents on medicine and due to the "BLOCKADE", these medicines are not seen in Cuba.

The "Blockade" places restrictions, such as extensions of credit (cash only), and trade, and hurts the locals not high ranking government officials.

I have seen my share of reporting on Cuba, and must say that if you are recieving your data from a US source then the news usually tends to be biased or the scope ofthe investigation becomes twisted to accomodate an "anti-Castro-Cuban" ideology, and forgive me my fellow Miami-Marielitos, but the exciled community down in Miami have a large voice upon the US-Cuban political status. Case in point, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Head of House Affairs-----"still best known for her staunch support of the U.S embargo against the communist island. “I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro,” she told an interviewer in a 2006 British documentary.

See report here if interested: http://hispanicohio.northcoastnow.com/2010...oreign-affairs/

The BBC tends to have non-biased reporting, and when I am in need of news from the Island, I'll call my friends, and they keep me posted about the "happenings" in beautiful Cuba.

Thanks for reading...Cheers

[fred170]

agree with what rob has here.

re the bloke getting his op after he was dead, don't forget that our own glorious government gave out stimulus payments in the GFC to dead people and my own brain dead council, when i needed a tree that was verging on collapse removed (as it was near power lines, the power company lops the top bit and the council gets rid of the bottom half), organised to remove the bottom half of the tree a week before the electricity people were cutting down the top half.

morons in bureaucracy are no worse in cuba than they are anywhere.

Thank you Rob and Ken....

[cigcars]

Thank you Rob and Ken....

*Thank YOU Freddie BoomBoom, Rob & Ken

[fred170]

*Thank YOU Freddie BoomBoom, Rob & Ken

Politics and Cuban Cigars...What a great match!!