Primary Health Care In Cuba

As health care concerns grow in the U.S., medical anthropologist Linda M. Whiteford and social psychologist Larry G. Branch present their findings on a health care anomaly, from an unlikely source. Primary Health Care in Cuba examines the highly successful model of primary health care in Cuba following the 1959 Cuban Revolution. This model, developed during a time of dramatic social and political change, created a preventive care system to better provide equity access to health care. Cuba's recognition as a paragon of health care has earned praise from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Pan American Health Organization. In this book, Whiteford and Branch explore the successes of Cuba's preventive primary health care system and its contribution to global health.

Quiet as it’s kept inside the United States, the Cuban revolution has achieved some phenomenal goals, reclaiming Cuba’s agriculture, advancing its literacy rate to nearly 100 percent – and remaking its medical system. Cuba has transformed its health care to the extent that this “third-world” country has been able to maintain a first-world medical system, whose health indicators surpass those of the United States at a fraction of the cost. Don Fitz combines his deep knowledge of Cuban history with his decades of on-the-ground experience in Cuba to bring us the story of how Cuba’s health care system evolved and how Cuba is tackling the daunting challenges to its revolution in this century. Fitz weaves together complex themes in Cuban history, moving the reader from one fascinating story to another. He describes how Cuba was able to create a unified system of clinics, and evolved the family doctor-nurse teams that became a model for poor countries throughout the world. How, in the 1980s and ‘90s, Cuba survived the encroachment of AIDS and increasing suffering that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then went on to establish the Latin American School of Medicine, which still brings thousands of international students to the island. Deeply researched, recounted with compassion, Cuban Health Care tells a story you won’t find anywhere else, of how, in terms of caring for everyday people, Cuba’s revolution continues.

Tens of thousands of people around the world die each day from causes that could have been prevented with access to affordable health care resources. In an era of unprecedented global inequity, Cuba, a small, low-income country, is making a difference by providing affordable health care to millions of marginalized people. Cuba has developed a world-class health care system that provides universal access to its own citizens while committing to one of the most extensive international health outreach campaigns in the world. The country has trained thousands of foreign medical students for free under a moral agreement that they serve desperate communities. To date, over 110,000 Cuban health care workers have served overseas. Where No Doctor Has Gone Before looks at the dynamics of Cuban medical internationalism to understand the impact of Cuba’s programs within the global health landscape. Topics addressed include the growing moral divide in equitable access to health care services, with a focus on medical tourism and Cuba’s alternative approach to this growing trend. Also discussed is the hidden curriculum in mainstream medical education that encourages graduates to seek lucrative positions rather than commit to service for the marginalized. The author shows how Cuba’s Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) serves as a counter to this trend. An acknowledgement of Cuba’s tremendous commitment, the book reveals a compelling model of global health practice that not only meets the needs of the marginalized but facilitates an international culture of cooperation and solidarity.

Challenging many of the assumptions scholars have made about the Cuban Revolution's impact on healthcare, this volume recounts one anthropologist's quest to discover the truth behind the complicated relationship between Cuba's revolution, politics, and healthcare system. Katherine Hirschfeld became interested in Cuba in the mid-1990s, after reading numerous laudatory books and articles describing the Castro regime's achievements in health and medicine. Cuba's population health indicators seemed to be far superior to those of neighboring countries, the national health costs low, and medical care free at point-of-service to the entire people. Historical records indicated that most of these positive health trends resulted from the changes instituted by Castro in 1959. Few of these authors, however, had actually spent time on the island. Thus, Hirschfeld found that academic writing on Cuba was often long on praise, but short on empirical research about what exactly had changed in Cuban medicine since 1959. After much bureaucratic wrangling, Hirschfeld managed to secure permission to conduct long-term ethnographic research in Cuba, where she lived with families from Havana and Santiago, conducted clinic observations, interviewed doctors and patients, and was treated in a Cuban hospital during an epidemic of dengue fever. The reality of the Cuban healthcare system turned out to be different than the scholarly ideal: it was bureaucratized, authoritarian, and repressive, and most people preferred to seek healthcare in the informal economy rather than endure the material shortages, red tape, and political surveillance of the public sector. Written in the form of a first-person narrative, Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 not only critically reevaluates Cuban healthcare after the 1959 revolution; it includes chapters detailing Cuban health trends from the Spanish-American War (1898) through the fall of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and into the present.

How the Cuban health care system became the blueprint for accessible medical care around the world Quiet as it’s kept inside the United States, the Cuban revolution has achieved some phenomenal goals, reclaiming Cuba’s agriculture, advancing its literacy rate to nearly 100 percent – and remaking its medical system. Cuba has transformed its health care to the extent that this “third-world” country has been able to maintain a first-world medical system, whose health indicators surpass those of the United States at a fraction of the cost. Don Fitz combines his deep knowledge of Cuban history with his decades of on-the-ground experience in Cuba to bring us the story of how Cuba’s health care system evolved and how Cuba is tackling the daunting challenges to its revolution in this century. Fitz weaves together complex themes in Cuban history, moving the reader from one fascinating story to another. He describes how Cuba was able to create a unified system of clinics, and evolved the family doctor-nurse teams that became a model for poor countries throughout the world. How, in the 1980s and ‘90s, Cuba survived the encroachment of AIDS and increasing suffering that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then went on to establish the Latin American School of Medicine, which still brings thousands of international students to the island. Deeply researched, recounted with compassion, Cuban Health Care tells a story you won’t find anywhere else, of how, in terms of caring for everyday people, Cuba’s revolution continues.

An ethnography of post-Soviet Cubas health-care sector which reveals Cuba to be a pragmatic and contradictory state.

While public health is important for revolutionary Cuba, providing medical services to the developing world is also a priority: 38,000 medical staff are engaged abroad; the largest medical school in the world (ELAM) has an enrollment of over 8,000 students from the Third World; and since 2004 over 1.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean have had their eyesight restored. How has this small nation of 11.3 million people managed to save more lives in the developing world than all of the G-8 countries together? And what are its motives? This book, the result of four years of research in Cuba, provides an updated analysis of this extraordinary record.

Health services have long been characterized by inequities and contradictions urban concentration of health resources versus a dearth of rural services and, within the urban situation, relatively efficient services f a few large institutions versus the conglomeration of small, inefficient, and largely autonomous units. Using the Cuban system as a model, Danielson discusses the ingrredients involved in the transformation into an equitable medical sys­tem. The sociopolitical formation of new health workers, the continuous emphasis on rural and primary services, the involvement of all groups, including specialists, in the general fanning process, and a pragmatic style of politically inspired leadership t all levels of organizations are examined in this context. The author so considers the need for heavy economic investments and popular support for social reform as prerequi­sites for establishment of equitable medical services. According to Dan­ielson, medical and social revolution are closely linked. Throughout his exposition, there is a rare quality of sympathy and com­passion for all the earnest and honest health reformers, physicians, andmedical faculty of Cuba, regardless of their political orientation.