Cuba’s famed healthcare system

From the Britain’s Daily Telegraph comes this tale of woe concerning Cuba’s famed health care system:

Maria, a plastic surgeon at a major hospital in Havana, never fails to enter theatre without her secret weapon: her own pair of scissors. She says they are much sharper than those provided by the hospital, which she thinks are from China.

Her mobile phone has also proved useful. Towards the end of an operation recently she overcame a blackout by asking the assistant to hold up the phone to provide light as she finished off a repair to a damaged brow. "The patient was distraught but we calmed her down. We have a lot of practice at that," she says. Cuba's renowned health service is in frail condition.

It has been a considerable source of pride for the communist authorities since the revolution of 1959, achieving infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable with America's.

But it is now badly short of medicines, instruments and equipment, while many hospitals languish in disrepair. Doctors can earn more as taxi drivers, while anecdotal evidence suggests growing numbers of medics are trying to flee the country.

Maria, not her real name, accurately describes her department, which is located in a basement, as "humid, dirty and dark". The walls look like they have not seen fresh paint in decades. She qualified 15 years ago, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union robbed the Caribbean island of cheap medical imports and precipitated a decline that now appears to be only worsening.

Washington has meanwhile maintained its widely criticised trade embargo. According to the American Public Health Association, the blockade effectively prevents Cuba from purchasing nearly 50 per cent of new drugs, including those for cancer, diabetes, heart disease and asthma.

Critics of Cuba's president Fidel Castro, who was forced by ill health to retire from public life six months ago and hand over power to his brother Raul, argue that his refusal to reform the state-controlled economy and its convoluted rules has helped impoverish the country.

The medical profession is facing further instability thanks to Castro's extraordinary initiative to export 30,000 doctors and dentists to 68 countries around the world, earning vital revenue for them and the nation. Some medics in Havana say the absence of so many colleagues has led to increases in waiting times at hospitals and clinics; they also lament the poorer quality of new trainees. The government insists that with another 70,000 doctors at home the expatriates can be spared.

Human rights groups have noted that doctors are forbidden from taking their children with them on the three-year stints, effectively holding them hostage to guarantee their parents' return.

A colleague of Maria said: "Some want to go for the money, but others don't. For me, it is not worth it — to work in countries with more crime and violence, to be away from family — no way."

The highest number — about 20,000 — work in Castro's major ally Venezuela, which sends Cuba 90,000 barrels of oil a day in exchange. Most of the estimated 500 medics who have so far defected from the programme have done so in Venezuela, with some claiming that they received lower pay than expected or were forced to work in dire conditions.

It always strikes me as absurd that the American trade embargo is always blamed for all of Cuba’s economic, social, political and now, medical woes. And yet, the United States is literally only one country out of an entire world to trade from.

I would love to see the how much money the Cuba economy has actually raked in from the efforts of Cuban government to promote Cuba as a destination of choice for medical tourism. Wasn’t it P.T. Barnum who said, "There is a sucker born every minute!"?