SubscribeReuters: Cuban Health Care Better Than US
From those lovers of communist dictators at Reuters:
Health care in Cuba more complicated than on SiCKO
By Anthony Boadle
HAVANA (Reuters) - When Jose Luis Cabrera had coronary by-pass surgery after a heart attack five years ago, his wife had to bring food and clean sheets to him in the hospital. The operation itself didn’t cost the Cuban couple a cent.
“I am so grateful. They saved his life,” said his wife, Daisy Martinez, who works as a cleaner in an office. “It would have cost a fortune in the United States.”
Hospitals in Cuba are often shabby and badly-lit, and lack equipment and medicines. But the health system built by President Fidel Castro’s government has produced results on a par with rich nations using the resources of a developing country.
Experts say that is because Cuba focused on prevention and because its universal free health care allows Cubans to see a doctor quickly and treat illness before it needs costly procedures…
On key statistics measured by the World Health Organization, Cuba is in line with the United States.
The average life expectancy of a child born in Cuba is 77.2 years, compared with 77.9 years in the United States, according to the WHO.
The number of children dying before their fifth birthday is seven per 1,000 live births in Cuba and eight per 1,000 in the United States.
Yet the United States spends more than 26 times as much on health, $6,096 per person a year, compared with only $229 in Cuba, the WHO figures show.
While Cuba has 73,000 doctors, twice as many doctors per capita as the United States, in recent years it has sent as many as 15,000 to work in the slums of Venezuela, its main political ally, in exchange for vital oil supplies…
Dr. David Hickey, a transplant surgeon at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, said Cuba is a world leader in primary health care based on preventive medicine.
“It’s a very sobering experience for someone coming from the affluent West to see what they can achieve,” he said…
A decades-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba forced it to develop its own molecular biology industry, which produces innovative drugs that prevent rejection in transplants.
Cuba has developed the world’s first Meningitis B vaccine which is available in Third World countries but not in Europe or the United States due to U.S. sanctions.
Hickey said Cuba’s health care budget was no larger that [sic] his hospital’s.
“Cuba looks after 11 million with the same budget and produces better health care in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and vaccination rates than we do,” he said.
Maybe if our watchdog media repeats this laughable lie often enough it will become true.
By the way, Dr. Hickey is a longtime Castro stooge:
David Hickey won an All-Ireland Football medal in 1974 with the Dublin team. At last year’s All-Ireland this team was honoured at half-time in Croke Park. Each member of the team was called out, stepped forward and acknowledged the applause of the spectators. When Doctor David Hickey’s name was called, he stepped forward, removed his jacket to display an “End Cuban Blockade” slogan on his white shirt. David is a Beaumont Hospital consultant. His interest in Cuba started when he was working in France and met a number of Cuban doctors. In 1998 he visited Havana to see for himself the effects of the American embargo on the health of the Cuban population.
“Cuba can’t import more than 60% of medicines because of the American inputs into those products. There are children on chemotherapy who are vomiting 20 times in 24 hours because the medicine to stop them vomiting can’t be imported,” David said. He has now gained support from doctors across the country. In April he will lead 40 doctors on a fact-finding mission to Cuba to study the health effects of the blockade.
But that doesn’t stop Reuters from citing him as if he is an objective observer.
He said what they (and Castro) wanted said.
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9 Responses to “Reuters: Cuban Health Care Better Than US”
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June 25th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
You know, I wonder if those life expectany figures just might be right.
The interesting statistics would be to look at what people die of in each country.
I doubt if there are many obesity or cholesteral-problem related deaths in Cuba, and I doubt if the average Cuban shares the same lack-of-exercise problem that most Americans develop by middle age.
I’m sure there are other similar consequences of our artificially rich diet that could be named. Drinking soft drinks and diabetes might be one?
In any case, we are dying from our richness, and they are kept healthy by their poverty.
Still, I’ll live here, thank you. Better a short, fat, happy life than a long, thin, hungry life, I think.
June 25th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
How are these figures calculated and by whom? The criteria is not defined here. This is Reuters, remember.
Different countries have different methods of defining and tabulating collected data. Infant mortality rates in the United States include many more births because of technologies that enhance their viability. Other countries do not go to the same lengths to save underweight or otherwise unhealthy newborns. Instead, they count them as “stillborns” which is not included in the mortality data.
Lokki, do you really believe that Cubans are “kept healthy by their poverty”? Wow.
June 25th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Quoting the WHO is like quoting the NYSlimes. The UN’s medical branch is notorious for proclaiming socialist countries as models of health care when in fact, they are far from it.
Who’s to say the reports provided by Cuba are accurate?
As stated on S & L many times over, if these socialist a**wipes love Cuba so much, pack your friggin’ bags and move there. I’m sure Fidel will greet you with wide open arms.
June 25th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Except that Cuban doctors so loathe their own country that when Castro sends them to places like the workers’ paradise of Venezuela, they defect….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....00987.html
I thought that was mentioned here once too but I couldn’t find the link.
June 25th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Their health care is so good that millions of Americans are waiting to go there. Oops, that’s just MM. He is kinda big.
June 25th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
“I thought that was mentioned here once too but I couldn’t find the link.”
I remember posting articles and reading comments here about the Cuban doctors defecting several times.
They must be on the “Castro is ill” threads.
June 25th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
“….health system built by President Fidel Castro’s government has produced results on a par with rich nations using the resources of a developing country.”
I’d be real curious to see how they back up that statement. You could also read anything you want in that statement.
Michael Moore can go to Hell, or Cuba….whichever is closer.
June 25th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
[...] States” and “health care” present some jaw-dropping picture of reality. Sweetness and Light is irked by a story in Reuters, Cuban Health Care Better Than [...]
June 26th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Well, we took in his criminals and nutcases….