A mecca for med students
Cuba trains doctors for the world
By Sharon
Eolis
Registered Nurse/Nurse Practitioner
Havana
Imagine living in a country with free accessible health care
and education, including medical school. If you lived in Cuba,
this dream would be a reality. In spite of the four-decade U.S.
blockade, Cuba has one physician for every 168 people. Since
the 1959 revolution some 67,500 doctors have been trained.
After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, leaders like
Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and others were faced with many
problems related to health care. About half of the doctors left
the country. The vast majority of the people, especially the
campesinos who lived in rural areas, had had little or no
access to health care. Infectious diseases and malnutrition
were rampant.
The newly formed Ministry of Health had to create and
develop a comprehensive health-care program.
One of the organizations called upon to help was the
Committees to Defend the Revolution. The CDRs are grassroots
organizations of block associations. They defend Cuba from
counter-revolutionaries and take on the day-to-day problems of
the people.
The Ministry of Health brought the CDRs into its campaign to
eradicate infectious diseases and other health problems. CDR
members went house to house educating the people about the need
for immunizations, checkups and prenatal care.
Their campaign was so effective that many diseases were
eliminated. Prenatal care became the routine for all expectant
mothers.
Medical solidarity
Over 25,000 Cuban health-care workers have volunteered to
provide medical care in countries throughout Latin America, the
Caribbean and Africa. These health-care workers have saved the
lives of hundreds of thousands of children in the Third
World.
Many years ago Cuba established a medical school in
Guinea-Bissau. It was destroyed in a recent civil war and the
government has sent the medical students to Cuba to finish
their studies.
When Hurricanes George and Mitch devastated Haiti and parts
of Central America, these countries called for emergency
assistance and Cuba answered by sending medical brig ades. At
the end of the emergency it became clear that there was a
general crisis in health care in these countries.
The Cuban leadership decided to open a medical school for
students from the Carib bean, Latin America and Africa. The
program was oriented to students with a bachelor's degree who
lived in poor rural areas with no doctors.
The Ministry of Health opened the Latin American School of
Medicine. Today it has enrolled 3,400 students from 23
countries. The Latin American and Caribbean nations represented
include Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia,
Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.
The African nations are Equatorial Guinea, Cape Verde,
Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria.
Fifty-six percent of the students are women. When the school
reaches capacity there will be 10,000 youths in the
program.
The Cuban government pays all tuition, room and board, and
an allowance. The students also receive one paid trip home to
visit their families each year.
This is a six-year medical training program. The first two
years are a pre-med program. Then the students are integrated
into Cuba's 20 medical schools.
Cuba offers to train
African Americans
In a speech at New York's Riverside Church last September,
President Fidel Castro stated, "Cuba has reduced its infant
mortality from 60 per 1,000 live births in the first year of
life to less than 7 deaths per 1,000." How does this compare
with U.S. infant mortality?
Take Washington as an example. The U.S. capital is a tale of
two cities. One part is the home of the administrative branch
of U.S. imperialism. The other is the home of an impoverished,
super-oppressed African American community.
The rate of infant mortality in Washing ton is twice as high
as in socialist Cuba.
There are other examples. According to Harper's Index, 79
countries, including Cuba, have a lower infant mortality rate
than Harlem, New York.
While Castro was in the United States he met with members of
the Congressional Black Caucus. He spoke with a representative
from Mississippi who stated that in his district there were
areas with no doctors.
Castro responded, "I see you are the Third World of the
United States... We are prepared to send you a few doctors free
of charge, the same as we do for other countries of the Third
World.
"And," the Cuban president added, "we are prepared to grant
a number of scholarships to poor youths in your district who
cannot afford to pay $200,000 to get the degree. It should be
noted there are many ghettos, barrios, Native reservations and
rural towns in the U.S. without doctors, as well."
At this meeting, Castro offered 500 scholarships for
indigent students from the U.S. to go to medical school in
Cuba.
Emphasis on preventive medicine
In the early days of the revolution, Che Guevara gave a
speech to medical students. He said: "Medicine will have to
convert itself into a science that serves to prevent disease
and orients the public toward carrying out its medical duties.
Medicine should only intervene in cases of extreme urgency, to
perform surgery or something else that lies outside the skills
of the people of the new society we are creating...
"The work of the Ministry of Health is to provide public
health services to the greatest possible number of people and
to institute a program of preventative medicine and hygienic
practices..."
The people of Cuba have put these words into practice--and
not only in Cuba. They have sent thousands of doctors to Latin
American and Africa and are training new health-care workers
from those countries to help them develop modern, comprehensive
health-care programs. This effort is based on Cuba's invaluable
experience in building a revolutionary socialist health-care
system.
The writer visited the Latin American School of Medicine
in November as a delegate to the Second World Meeting
of Friendship and Solidarity with Cuba.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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