PL
2004-07-09 09:58:58 UTC
National Post, July 7, 2004
For Cubans, a bitter pill
(Even as Cuba is abandoned by long-time allies for its human rights
violations, Canada continues to display affection for Fidel Castro's one-man
state. In the second of a three-part series, Isabel Vincent explores the
myth of of the Caribbean nation's health care system.)
by Isabel Vincent
by Isabel Vincent
MORON, Cuba - In this historic town of 70,000 people in central Cuba, a
small bottle of tetracycline costs US$5 and a tube of cortisone cream will
set you back as much as US$25.
But neither are available at the local pharmacy, which is neat and spotless,
but stocks almost nothing. Even the most common pharmaceutical items, such
as Aspirin and rubbing alcohol, are conspicuously absent. In their place
there is a neat display of green boxes of herbal diet teas from Spain.
One of the myths Canadians harbour about Cuba is that its people may be poor
and living under a repressive government, but they have access to quality
health and education facilities. It's a portrait encouraged by the
government, but the reality is sharply different.
Antibiotics, one of the most valuable commodities on the cash-strapped
Communist island, are in extremely short supply and available only on the
black market. Aspirin can be purchased only at government-run dollar stores,
which carry common medications at a huge markup in U.S. dollars.
This puts them out of reach of most Cubans, who are paid little and in
pesos. Their average wage is 300 pesos per month, about $12.
"My parents are really old and suffer from heart problems, and they need to
take an Aspirin a day, but even I have difficulty finding it," says Estela
(not her real name), one of the pharmacists who works at a small shop off
the main square, where school-children in maroon and beige uniforms sit on
park benches sharing snacks.
Still, the residents of Moron are luckier than most Cubans because many of
them work in the nearby resorts, where they often receive foreign
medications as tips.
"We know how difficult life is here, so when we come for a vacation, we
always bring a few bottles of antibiotics and Tylenol," says Laura, a
housewife from Oakville, Ont., who was recently vacationing at a large
resort in nearby Cayo Coco.
A 72-year-old pensioner from Toronto who did not want to be identified also
said she had arrived for her recent vacation well- stocked with tubes of
antibiotic cream, Aspirin, decongestants and bandages.
"My doctor in Toronto told me that there is nothing available in Cuba, so I
came prepared just in case I needed any of these things for myself," she
said.
"But I am leaving most of what I brought for the maids and the bartender."
For years, supporters of the Communist regime of Fidel Castro have praised
the island's universal health care system as a model for the developing
world. Indeed, Cuba has the world's highest concentration of physicians and
health care is free.
"If you need the most complicated operation, you can get it at a Cuban
hospital," Estela said. "But medicines are the problem."
After the Soviet Union stopped sending Cuba US$5-billion in annual funding
to prop up its economy, the health care system, like most social services,
fell on difficult times.
In common with other buildings on the Communist island, hospitals are
falling apart, surgeons lack basic supplies and must re-use latex gloves.
Patients must buy their own sutures on the black market and provide
bedsheets and food for extended hospital stays.
The situation is so bad that a Canadian pro-Castro group urges tourists in a
recent issue of its monthly newsletter to take "a suitcase full of medical
supplies to drop off at a local clinic or hospital with a letter about
humanitarian aid."
Like many supporters of the Castro regime, the Canadian-Cuban Friendship
Association blames the island's crumbling health care situation on the
42-year-old trade embargo imposed by the United States.
"Cuba's uniquely resourceful health care system ... has continued working
well for decades despite the U.S. embargo," notes the association on its Web
site.
But the embargo is only part of the problem, Cuba analysts say. Over the
past decade ordinary Cubans have lost out as the government reoriented the
public health system to earn desperately needed hard currency. Today, the
Cuban government has set up several tourist-only hospitals to cater to the
growing number of foreigners arriving on health tourism packages.
Every year, thousands of visitors, most of them from other Latin American
countries and some parts of Europe, arrive in Havana to obtain treatment at
cut-rate prices. A kidney transplant in Cuba costs about half the price of
one in the United States, which can be as high as US$45,000. Tourists also
come for cut-rate prices on plastic surgery and even dental work.
Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona raves about Cuban health care, and has
been repeatedly treated for his drug addiction at a Cuban drug and alcohol
addiction centre.
"It's the best health care system in the world," he recently told an
Argentine reporter.
Indeed, tourist hospitals in Cuba are well-stocked with the latest equipment
and imported medicines, said a Cuban pediatrician, who did not want to be
identified.
Cuban doctors also specialize in treating Parkinson's disease and retinatis
pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that causes night blindness and can
eventually result in complete loss of sight.
"Tourists have everything they need," said the pediatrician, who spoke on
the condition he would not be identified in any way. "But for Cubans, it's
different. Unless you work with tourists or have a relative in Miami sending
you money, you will not be able to get what you need if you are sick in
Cuba. As a doctor, I find it disgusting."
In 1993, when Havana began the tourism packages, officials sought to convert
Cuba's prestigious International Centre for Neurological Restoration, which
over the years had gained an international reputation for treating trauma
and Parkinson's Disease, into a tourists-only hospital.
But the hospital's founder, the internationally respected neurosurgeon Hilda
Molina, refused to comply with the government decision.
"There is a fundamental discrepancy," she said at the time. "I am not a
politician. I am a doctor. Cubans should be treated the same as foreigners.
Cubans have less rights in their own country than foreigners who visit
here."
Dr. Molina also said government officials encouraged her to transplant brain
tissue from still-warm fetuses into wealthy foreign victims of Parkinson's
disease, a practice she found unethical because many of the Cuban women who
had undergone state-financed abortions were not told their fetuses had been
dissected for transplants.
Dr. Molina, who was branded a counterrevolutionary and ban-ned from
practising medicine in Cuba, stands by those same principles today. Now 60,
she has refused to cave in to government pressure and survives in Havana on
remittances from her family abroad.
For the past decade she has been trying to obtain a permit to leave the
island and go to Argentina to visit her son, also a neurosurgeon. The
government has repeatedly refused her requests, calling her brain "a
national asset."
These days, officials in the Castro government say they rely on money earned
from joint-venture operations on the island with foreign companies to
finance the universal public health system.
Cuban workers contracted for joint venture operations are paid indirectly.
The Cuban government receives about US$450 per worker per month from the
foreign company. While the worker typically makes 5% of this total amount --
in pesos-- the government directs most of the foreign currency earned in
this scheme to pay for its social services, including health care for
ordinary Cubans.
"The Cuban government says indirect employment helps protect the social
welfare system," say Matias Travieso-Diaz and Charles Trumbull in a recent
study on foreign investment in Cuba published in George Washington
University's International Law Review. "Employment agencies provide a
constant source of hard currency for the Cuban government."
According to the report, about 30,000 Cubans work in joint- venture
operations in manufacturing, tourism, banking and mineral exploration. The
government earns US$15-million per month from their work.
"The Cuban government argues that the money that the government keeps away
from the worker is reinvested for the good of the entire population," the
study says, adding world labour regulatory bodies such as the International
Labour Organization have condemned the practice, in which the Cuban
government essentially pockets 95% of a worker's wages.
"There is absolutely nothing free about Cuban health care and other social
services," says Ismael Sambra, president of the Cuban-Canadian Foundation.
"Social services are financed from the sweat of the poor Cuban workers."
Some ILO officials suggest the state could finance social welfare by further
opening the economy to foreign investment and collecting taxes on the income
of companies involving foreign investors.
But for most Cubans, the question of who is financing health care is rather
academic.
"We have nothing," said Jasmin, a nurse who lives in Moron.
"I haven't seen Aspirin in a Cuban store here for more than a year. If you
have any pills in your purse, I'll take them. Even if they have passed their
expiry date."
***@nationalpost.com
© National Post 2004
http://www.canada.com/search/story.html?id=512e6694-e9c7-4e97-99b4-e27fc98b59b4
For Cubans, a bitter pill
(Even as Cuba is abandoned by long-time allies for its human rights
violations, Canada continues to display affection for Fidel Castro's one-man
state. In the second of a three-part series, Isabel Vincent explores the
myth of of the Caribbean nation's health care system.)
by Isabel Vincent
by Isabel Vincent
MORON, Cuba - In this historic town of 70,000 people in central Cuba, a
small bottle of tetracycline costs US$5 and a tube of cortisone cream will
set you back as much as US$25.
But neither are available at the local pharmacy, which is neat and spotless,
but stocks almost nothing. Even the most common pharmaceutical items, such
as Aspirin and rubbing alcohol, are conspicuously absent. In their place
there is a neat display of green boxes of herbal diet teas from Spain.
One of the myths Canadians harbour about Cuba is that its people may be poor
and living under a repressive government, but they have access to quality
health and education facilities. It's a portrait encouraged by the
government, but the reality is sharply different.
Antibiotics, one of the most valuable commodities on the cash-strapped
Communist island, are in extremely short supply and available only on the
black market. Aspirin can be purchased only at government-run dollar stores,
which carry common medications at a huge markup in U.S. dollars.
This puts them out of reach of most Cubans, who are paid little and in
pesos. Their average wage is 300 pesos per month, about $12.
"My parents are really old and suffer from heart problems, and they need to
take an Aspirin a day, but even I have difficulty finding it," says Estela
(not her real name), one of the pharmacists who works at a small shop off
the main square, where school-children in maroon and beige uniforms sit on
park benches sharing snacks.
Still, the residents of Moron are luckier than most Cubans because many of
them work in the nearby resorts, where they often receive foreign
medications as tips.
"We know how difficult life is here, so when we come for a vacation, we
always bring a few bottles of antibiotics and Tylenol," says Laura, a
housewife from Oakville, Ont., who was recently vacationing at a large
resort in nearby Cayo Coco.
A 72-year-old pensioner from Toronto who did not want to be identified also
said she had arrived for her recent vacation well- stocked with tubes of
antibiotic cream, Aspirin, decongestants and bandages.
"My doctor in Toronto told me that there is nothing available in Cuba, so I
came prepared just in case I needed any of these things for myself," she
said.
"But I am leaving most of what I brought for the maids and the bartender."
For years, supporters of the Communist regime of Fidel Castro have praised
the island's universal health care system as a model for the developing
world. Indeed, Cuba has the world's highest concentration of physicians and
health care is free.
"If you need the most complicated operation, you can get it at a Cuban
hospital," Estela said. "But medicines are the problem."
After the Soviet Union stopped sending Cuba US$5-billion in annual funding
to prop up its economy, the health care system, like most social services,
fell on difficult times.
In common with other buildings on the Communist island, hospitals are
falling apart, surgeons lack basic supplies and must re-use latex gloves.
Patients must buy their own sutures on the black market and provide
bedsheets and food for extended hospital stays.
The situation is so bad that a Canadian pro-Castro group urges tourists in a
recent issue of its monthly newsletter to take "a suitcase full of medical
supplies to drop off at a local clinic or hospital with a letter about
humanitarian aid."
Like many supporters of the Castro regime, the Canadian-Cuban Friendship
Association blames the island's crumbling health care situation on the
42-year-old trade embargo imposed by the United States.
"Cuba's uniquely resourceful health care system ... has continued working
well for decades despite the U.S. embargo," notes the association on its Web
site.
But the embargo is only part of the problem, Cuba analysts say. Over the
past decade ordinary Cubans have lost out as the government reoriented the
public health system to earn desperately needed hard currency. Today, the
Cuban government has set up several tourist-only hospitals to cater to the
growing number of foreigners arriving on health tourism packages.
Every year, thousands of visitors, most of them from other Latin American
countries and some parts of Europe, arrive in Havana to obtain treatment at
cut-rate prices. A kidney transplant in Cuba costs about half the price of
one in the United States, which can be as high as US$45,000. Tourists also
come for cut-rate prices on plastic surgery and even dental work.
Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona raves about Cuban health care, and has
been repeatedly treated for his drug addiction at a Cuban drug and alcohol
addiction centre.
"It's the best health care system in the world," he recently told an
Argentine reporter.
Indeed, tourist hospitals in Cuba are well-stocked with the latest equipment
and imported medicines, said a Cuban pediatrician, who did not want to be
identified.
Cuban doctors also specialize in treating Parkinson's disease and retinatis
pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that causes night blindness and can
eventually result in complete loss of sight.
"Tourists have everything they need," said the pediatrician, who spoke on
the condition he would not be identified in any way. "But for Cubans, it's
different. Unless you work with tourists or have a relative in Miami sending
you money, you will not be able to get what you need if you are sick in
Cuba. As a doctor, I find it disgusting."
In 1993, when Havana began the tourism packages, officials sought to convert
Cuba's prestigious International Centre for Neurological Restoration, which
over the years had gained an international reputation for treating trauma
and Parkinson's Disease, into a tourists-only hospital.
But the hospital's founder, the internationally respected neurosurgeon Hilda
Molina, refused to comply with the government decision.
"There is a fundamental discrepancy," she said at the time. "I am not a
politician. I am a doctor. Cubans should be treated the same as foreigners.
Cubans have less rights in their own country than foreigners who visit
here."
Dr. Molina also said government officials encouraged her to transplant brain
tissue from still-warm fetuses into wealthy foreign victims of Parkinson's
disease, a practice she found unethical because many of the Cuban women who
had undergone state-financed abortions were not told their fetuses had been
dissected for transplants.
Dr. Molina, who was branded a counterrevolutionary and ban-ned from
practising medicine in Cuba, stands by those same principles today. Now 60,
she has refused to cave in to government pressure and survives in Havana on
remittances from her family abroad.
For the past decade she has been trying to obtain a permit to leave the
island and go to Argentina to visit her son, also a neurosurgeon. The
government has repeatedly refused her requests, calling her brain "a
national asset."
These days, officials in the Castro government say they rely on money earned
from joint-venture operations on the island with foreign companies to
finance the universal public health system.
Cuban workers contracted for joint venture operations are paid indirectly.
The Cuban government receives about US$450 per worker per month from the
foreign company. While the worker typically makes 5% of this total amount --
in pesos-- the government directs most of the foreign currency earned in
this scheme to pay for its social services, including health care for
ordinary Cubans.
"The Cuban government says indirect employment helps protect the social
welfare system," say Matias Travieso-Diaz and Charles Trumbull in a recent
study on foreign investment in Cuba published in George Washington
University's International Law Review. "Employment agencies provide a
constant source of hard currency for the Cuban government."
According to the report, about 30,000 Cubans work in joint- venture
operations in manufacturing, tourism, banking and mineral exploration. The
government earns US$15-million per month from their work.
"The Cuban government argues that the money that the government keeps away
from the worker is reinvested for the good of the entire population," the
study says, adding world labour regulatory bodies such as the International
Labour Organization have condemned the practice, in which the Cuban
government essentially pockets 95% of a worker's wages.
"There is absolutely nothing free about Cuban health care and other social
services," says Ismael Sambra, president of the Cuban-Canadian Foundation.
"Social services are financed from the sweat of the poor Cuban workers."
Some ILO officials suggest the state could finance social welfare by further
opening the economy to foreign investment and collecting taxes on the income
of companies involving foreign investors.
But for most Cubans, the question of who is financing health care is rather
academic.
"We have nothing," said Jasmin, a nurse who lives in Moron.
"I haven't seen Aspirin in a Cuban store here for more than a year. If you
have any pills in your purse, I'll take them. Even if they have passed their
expiry date."
***@nationalpost.com
© National Post 2004
http://www.canada.com/search/story.html?id=512e6694-e9c7-4e97-99b4-e27fc98b59b4