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Vol. 81/No. 6 February 13, 2017
‘Revolution made health care a right,’ Cuban doctors say
BY ILONA GERSH
CHICAGO — Three doctors from Cuba spent several days here touring health
clinics in working-class neighborhoods as part of a collaboration
project sponsored by University of Illinois and the Cuban Ministry of
Public Health.
Their exchanges with medical workers and others during the Jan. 9-12
visit gave a glimpse of the difference a socialist revolution can make —
treating health care as a right, not a commodity, and transforming the
social relations among doctors and those they care for.
The Cuban delegation included Sonia María González Vega, director of
primary health care in the municipality of Camagüey; José Armando
Arronte Villamarín, provincial health director in Las Tunas; and Carlos
Calvis Cabrera, coordinator of the island’s international medical brigades.
At the UIC Mile Square clinic in Englewood, a Black neighborhood on the
South Side, Dr. Calvis explained how the government opened a network of
polyclinics in 1963, four years after the Cuban Revolution. “It was
truly a revolution,” he said. Today there are nearly seven doctors for
every 1,000 people in Cuba, one of the highest rates in the world.
Infant mortality is lower than in the United States.
“Cuba does not have an abundance of technological equipment,” Calvis
said. “So we rely on being close to the people we serve to develop a
comprehensive health prevention program that can stop major health
concerns like diabetes before they develop. Each clinic serves 1,500
people, and 100 percent of the community is served.” Each clinic has a
doctor, a pediatrician, a midwife, a psychiatrist and a nurse.
All three Cuban doctors spoke proudly of their participation in
international medical brigades — González and Arronte in Venezuela and
Calvis in Namibia.
“We have 25,000 doctors in 67 countries, on all six continents,” said
Calvis. “In 50 percent of those countries, we receive no financial
compensation. Even with our economic limitations, we conduct all of our
health care with this guiding principle: We have a debt to the people of
the world. We try to open all the barriers that are closed to health
care where there are few medical resources.”
At another clinic in Humboldt Park, the doctors described how they
involve high school students as front-line health care workers by having
them check in on sick patients in their neighborhoods.
Dr. Robert Winn, associate vice chancellor of community-based practice
at UI Health and one of the organizers of the exchange, said he would
like to emulate that practice, but gun violence in Chicago would make it
difficult, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
That kind of violence is “not a thing that we really have that much
experience with in our country,” Dr. Arronte replied.
Commenting on the involvement of Cubans in health care in their
communities, Winn told the Sun-Times, “People will say, ‘Well, that’s a
totalitarian society. They’re just doing what they’re told.’ Actually,
I’ve been there enough now to know that’s not it. They take pride in it.”
Related articles:
Regional summit calls for end to US embargo of Cuba
Washington ends ‘wet-foot, dry-foot’ Cuba program
Cuban women wanted to participate in a genuine revolution
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