[Marxism] What's With All the Cuban Doctors?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.slate.com/id/2158866/

What's With All the Cuban Doctors?
How Castro built a nation of physicians.
By Christopher Beam
Posted Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007, at 7:04 PM ET

Cuba has announced it will send a group of 
doctors to help Castro's old ally President 
Daniel Ortega bolster the health system in 
Nicaragua. Castro also sent about 1,700 
physicians to Bolivia in 2006 to lend aid to the 
government of Evo Morales. Why does Cuba have so many doctors to spare?

Well, because Castro said so. The Cuban 
constitution guarantees every inhabitant the 
"right to health protection and care." After the 
revolution in 1959, half of the country's 6,000 
doctors fled the island. The new government 
promoted medical education as part of a national 
project to revamp the health-care system, and by 
1984, Cuba had enough doctors to put a physician 
and a nurse in every neighborhood. Some will tell 
you Cubans become doctors because they believe in 
universal health care; others emphasize the 
social and economic rewards. (Doctor aren't paid 
much, though?some make less than $40 a month.) 
Whatever their motivations, Cuba has more doctors 
per capita than any other country: 70,000 for a population of 11 million.

As a result, Cuba's national health-care 
system?there is no private care in Cuba?is widely 
praised, and the Latin American School of Medical 
Science in Havana attracts students from around 
the world. But some say the system has been 
crippled by a lack of supplies. The combination 
of the U.S. embargo and the collapse of the 
Soviet Union, Cuba's primary financier and 
supplier, have hurt Cuba's access to medical 
equipment. Some critics of Castro cite his own 
dire medical condition?and the decision to bring 
in a Spanish doctor to treat him?as evidence of a 
failed system. But the numbers suggest Cubans 
lead healthy lives. Life expectancy in Cuba is 
the same as that of the United States, and its 
rate of HIV/AIDS is one of the world's lowest.

In fact, Cuba's medical prowess may be its ticket 
out of poverty. In the 1990s, Cuba was the first 
country to develop a meningitis B vaccine. In 
2005, Cuba provided cancer treatment technology 
for a new biotech company in China. Then last 
year Washington agreed to make an exception to 
the trade embargo to allow a California firm to 
test a Cuban cancer treatment. Thanks to an 
increase in biotech exports, Cuba raised its 
health budget a couple of years ago to $300 million.

So, if having all these doctors has helped Cuba, 
why does Castro send so many of them abroad? Part 
of it is Cuba's commitment to internationalism, 
another ideal of the revolution. (Political 
opponents say the government is showcasing one 
success of an otherwise botched revolution.) 
"Medical diplomacy" is also a way to win and keep 
friends, and to trade services for goods that 
Cuba wouldn't have otherwise. For example, about 
15,000 Cuban doctors and dentists currently work 
in Venezuela, while President Hugo Chavez 
supplies Cuba with oil. Castro even offered to 
send a group of 1,600 doctors to the Gulf Coast 
after Katrina, but he said the United States didn't respond.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

The Explainer thanks Ellen Bernstein of the 
Interreligious Foundation for Community 
Organization and Felix Martin of Florida International University.
Christopher Beam is a Slate editorial assistant.


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