[CubaNews] Clinics staffed by Cuban doctors popular throughout Venezuela

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana.  December 22, 2006

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/diciembre/vier22/militan.html

Clinics staffed by Cuban doctors popular throughout Venezuela

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND RÓGER CALERO

? The Militant newspaper ?

VALENCIA, Venezuela??Barrio Adentro is the best thing that happened to this
country,? said Wilson Salazar, a construction worker here. He was referring
to Into the Barrio, a government-sponsored program that has brought some
20,000 volunteer Cuban doctors to this country offering quality health care
free of charge to working-class districts and rural areas where people have
had no access to medical services.

When he spoke to the Militant here October 6, Salazar was part of a crew
putting the finishing touches in the Bergoña Integrated Diagnostic Center, a
clinic in the Maguanagua section of Valencia, the country?s third most
populous city and one of its top industrial centers. La Bergoña, financed by
the government like all the neighborhood clinics largely staffed by Cuban
doctors, is scheduled to be completed before the end of the year, said
Uvaldo Rivera, the construction crew foreman.

?We are well into the second phase of Barrio Adentro,? said Nelly Gaerste, a
Venezuelan doctor who is part of the program. A small but slowly growing
number of Venezuelan doctors, about 2,000 nationwide, according to Gaerste,
work alongside Cubans in these neighborhood clinics.

The program was launched in the Libertador municipality of Caracas in 2003.
The Ministry of Health first appealed to Venezuelan doctors who would be
willing to live in urban working-class neighborhoods or rural areas and
offer their services for free, with a salary of about $600 a month paid by
the government. Very few came forward to begin with.

Through an agreement with Havana, large numbers of volunteer Cuban doctors,
most of whom had carried out internationalist missions in other countries,
began arriving in March 2003. The Cuban doctors receive a monthly stipend of
$250 to cover living expenses. Many live in workers? homes in the areas
where they serve, operating primary care clinics out of community centers
and peoples? houses. Since 2004 the government has also built nearly 2,000
modulos, small neighborhood clinics with a doctor?s office on the first
floor and a couple of rooms above where medical personnel can rest. These
doctors staff the clinics in the morning and in the afternoons they visit
people at home, from building to building, getting to know their families,
medical records, and living conditions, and practicing preventive medicine.

Unlike many Venezuelan doctors, ?they treat us like human beings,? said
Jesús Arena, a security guard at the Borgoña construction site. This remark
about the Cuban doctors has become commonplace as they have reached every
corner of the country and their reputation has spread, cutting across
anti-communist prejudices that were prevalent four years ago. (See also
?Cuban doctors in Venezuela operate free neighborhood clinics? in Nov. 3,
2003, Militant, and ?Clinics operated by Cuban doctors expand in Venezuela?
in July 18, 2005, issue.)

The number of these primary care clinics reached a high of 15,000 in
Venezuela last year, said Joel Pantoja Jr., 27, a Venezuelan doctor here who
pioneered the entry of Venezuelan doctors into Barrio Adentro. ?The number
of the primary care clinics has now declined to about 9,000,? Pantoja added.
The reason, he said, is that more Cuban doctors are being shifted to larger
clinics, called Integrated Diagnostic Centers (CDI), and there are not
enough Venezuelan doctors who have been qualified yet to fill the gap.

Under Barrio Adentro 2, which started in early 2005, larger popular clinics
are being built that are open around the clock. The CDIs offer quality
emergency care, including minor surgery, free of charge. Modern equipment in
well-built and air-conditioned facilities allows advanced diagnosis and
care. Ambulances are included. The government is also building Integrated
Rehabilitation Centers and advanced technology labs.

The third phase of Barrio Adentro, which was launched this year, includes
repairing and re-equipping the country?s 299 public hospitals and building
new ones that would offer care like the clinics operated by Cuban doctors.

Speaking October 5 at the inauguration of a hospital in Barcelona,
Anzoátegui state, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez said the government has
built 216 larger clinics and 6 high-tech labs across the country in the last
year and a half.

The pace is much slower than what had been anticipated. The government had
projected building 1,200 CDIs and rehabilitation centers by the end of 2005.

?There is opposition to Barrio Adentro in the health-care establishment
because most Venezuelan doctors practice medicine to make a profit,? said
Gaerste.

In June 2003 the Venezuelan Medical Federation (FMV) filed suit asking the
courts to bar Cuban doctors from practicing. A lower court decision to grant
the request was overturned by higher courts. In July 2005 hundreds of FMV
members protested in downtown Caracas claiming Cuban volunteers are taking
the jobs of Venezuelan doctors. A handful of incidents of physical attacks
on Cuban doctors took place when the program started. But these have
subsided. As Jesús Arena put it, expressing a popular sentiment, ?If they
touch the Cuban doctors we?ll go after them because the Cubans save our
lives. We take care of their security.?

Mabel Martínez is a Cuban doctor working at the Florida CDI in Valencia. She
told the Militant October 6 that two months ago, after treating a man who
had been hit above his left eye with a rock, she referred him to a nearby
hospital with an X-ray showing he had a fracture that required surgery. ?The
Venezuelan doctor on duty threw the X-ray in the garbage and sent the man
home when he saw the referral was from a Cuban doctor,? she said. ?The man
almost lost his eye.?

Martínez said such incidents have become less frequent. Last month, she
said, some Venezuelan doctors from a nearby public hospital asked for a
meeting with Cuban doctors at the Florida clinic to discuss how to
collaborate better.

All the nurses, janitors, and other personnel at these clinics, besides the
doctors, are Venezuelan. Gaerste, one of a few Venezuelan doctors who works
at the Canaima CDI, introduced Militant reporters to three of the janitors
there, María Hisea, Paula Piñedo, and Carmen Salazar, who said the attitudes
of the Cuban doctors of selfless human solidarity and putting the interests
of the patients first are prevalent among the Venezuelan personnel too. ?We
don?t just clean the floors,? Salazar said. ?When there is an emergency and
someone comes in bloody late at night we help the people from the ambulance
bring them in. We like it here. Barrio Adentro is how the whole society
should be.?

 




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