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Havana-guide:
Health Tourism in Cuba
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PACEMAKER SURGERY
Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister Patrick Manning had a pacemaker installed in Cuba in August 2004. The prime minister had the pacemaker installed in a 45-minute procedure and was able to speak to top advisers several hours later. Manning, who also served as prime minister from 1991-1995, has praised Cuba's health system and sought assistance from the Cuban Government on health issues. In 2003, the two countries agreed to allow 80 doctors and nurses from Cuba to work in Trinidad for three years to help ease a shortage of medical professionals.
Fidel Castro has declared the Cuba will be the only developing state to be a major competitor in the world’s biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, and a concentrated national effort prompted by the Maximum Leader himself has made independent progress unrivaled elsewhere in the developing world. Former Soviet states and third world countries are the primary buyers of Cuba’s medical products.
PRESENT STATE OF HEALTH CARE
According to Cuban government statistics, currently Cuba has more than 71,000 doctors, with 20,000 health workers in Venezuela, and 5,000 more spread over the world in over 60 additional countries, as it views such assignments as a vital part of its foreign policy. Cuba has sent doctors to underdeveloped countries and educated foreign doctors since the 1960s.
When the new socialist revolution took over, there was only one medical school and a great deficiency of physicians, since an estimated 40% of their medical staff left the country after the revolution. Now there are 15 medical schools on the island. All doctors must complete a nine-year medical program: five years of basic training, one year of in-hospital internship, followed by a mandatory three-year placement at a rural post.
In early 1999 the campus of the former naval school became the Latin American School of Medicine with 1,993 students from 18 nations, representing almost the entire continent. Currently there are 8,447 young people studying on the five-year degree course. Those in the third to fifth years are found in the 21 medicine faculties throughout the island, and linked to hospitals in the provinces where they are located.
Healthcare received 11.7 percent of the national budget and 98 percent of the population is covered by the state system, which emphasizes access and prevention. Consequently, Cuba has first-world figures for average life expectancy (75 years), infant mortality and other indicators. Maternal and child health is an area of top priority for the Cuban government and women have guaranteed and easy access to healthcare.
Still, don’t expect to make too much if you decide to practice medicine in Cuba – health care workers recently received a much publicized pay raise of 57 Cuban pesos – equivalent to less than three US dollars. Cubans get their state salaries and pensions in regular pesos, which they use to pay the low utility rates and buy a very limited amount of low-cost, rationed food items.
Cuban doctors treated over 1.5 million Pakistanis – 48 percent of them women – following the Asian country’s devastating earthquake in October 2005. Cuba’s international health team gave medical support working out of tent hospitals in the towns of Balakot and Garbi Habibullah in the Northwest Frontier Province, and in Garhy Duppatta, in Northern Pakistan’s Cache Mira area.
The 40-year economic embargo forced by the USA on Cuba sharply limits the sale of medicine and medical equipment, which, given the USA’s primacy in the pharmaceutical industry, in effect blocks Cuba from buying almost half of the new top-notch drugs on the market. Despite this, the Cuban constitution makes health care a right of every citizen and the responsibility of the government.
The American Association for World Health has, after an inquiry lasting one year, determined that the US embargo of Cuba has severely debilitated the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. A humanitarian disaster has been avoided only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a healthcare system intended to bring primary and preventive healthcare to all its citizens.
In 2004 Cuba’s health system reported the lowest infant mortality rate in history, due in part to health programs carried out by local authorities. The Ministry of Health reported 5.8 deaths per every 1,000 live births in 2004 according to statistics from the health sector, one of the lowest rates in the world. Statistics from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that Cuba is among the 36 countries in the world with the lowest mortality rate.
CUBA's RESPONSE TO AIDS
A Model for the Developing World
except for Cuba (0.7%) the Caribbean has the second highest rate of AIDS infection in the world (2.3%) after sub-Saharan Africa (9%). When AIDS burst out in the early 1980s, the scientific world was shocked. The response of Cuba was critical at that point. In 1983, two years before the first case of HIV appeared in Cuba, they had already set up the National Commission on AIDS to educate their population.
One year after documenting its first case of AIDS in 1985, Cuba introduced the world’s only compulsory quarantine policy for people with HIV infection. The country’s early response to HIV was unique in the world, but so were the results of its quarantine. In 2002, the Cuban government reported an HIV prevalence of 0.03%; nearly 11 times lower than that in the United States.
Ban on US Travel
US President George Bush recently angered both Fidel Castro and ordinary Cubans by charging, “the dictator welcomes sex tourism as a vital source of hard currency to keep his corrupt government afloat.”
Castro countered that Mr. Bush’s accusations may be rooted in his untreated alcoholic past. “Most people know these tourists [Canadians] are retirees and people of third age who seek safety and tranquility in our country,” the Maximum Leader said.
Bureaucrats in Cuba are concerned that a flood of American travelers would damage the very atmosphere drawing them in the first place if the US Senate were to lift a travel ban to Cuba, although the island nation would welcome the vast influx of tourism dollars. Both sides said inadequate hotel space would limit any increase in American tourism,
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