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The Myth of Cuban Health Care

“If there’s one thing they do right in Cuba, it’s health care,” said Michael Moore in a 2007 interview. Angela Davis stated that Cuba has “the best healthcare system in all of the region” and “in many ways, it is better than the U.S.”

Clare Wenham from the London School of Economics said, “One thing is well established within the global health community ist the strength of Cuban national healthcare system.”

These claims have been featured in hundreds of newspaper articles and magazine stories over the years, celebrating Cuba’s supposed health-care system. This myth that is so far from reality has endured for so many years, a testimony to the power of the Castro regime’s propaganda apparatus.

Rotceh Rios Molino, a Cuban physician who fled the country’s medical mission in Mexico while on duty, says that “the Cuban health system is destroyed.” There are reasons Spanish “The doctors’ offices are in terrible shape.”

People are dying in hallways,” says José Angel SánchezInterview with a Cuban doctor, who also defected to the Venezuelan medical mission. There are reasonsIn Spanish

Rios claims that SánchezCuba’s healthcare system, according to those with experience in medicine, is an absolute disaster.The most common supplies in clinics, including oxygen, antibiotics, and running water, are not available. Patients often use the hallways of these hospitals to seek treatment. Cuban hospitals can be unsanitary or decrepit. It’sYou would expect exactly the same in a communist country.

Only thing has changed is the fact that the propaganda façade of the government, thanks to social media and COVID-19’s pandemics, finally began to crumble.

Yet, in 2021 some journalists fell for the false claim that Cuba had been the leader in responding to COVID-19. By July of that year, ordinary Cubans had taken to the streets—and to Twitter and Facebook—in part to call attention to what the pandemic had actually meant for Cuban hospitals and clinics.

The 15-years since Michael Moore’s documentary has passed. Sicko, The celebration celebrated Cuban health care. Everyday citizens received smartphones, Instagram, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to enable them to speak truthfully about the experience of walking into a Cuban hospital.

How did the propaganda machine of Castro’s regime fool so many people for so long, you ask? Maria Werlau is the executive director at the Cuba Archive. She believes that Cuba’s foreign health missions are teams composed of medical professionals who have been dispatched overseas to deliver routine and emergency care.

In 1963, the first medical mission to Algeria was dispatched. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, which saw the government lose its main source of assistance, the program was significantly increased to generate revenue for the poor nation.

Cuban officials have promoted missions as humanitarian efforts and an expression of communist spirit and selflessness. He made this 1960 speech Revolutionary Medicine the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara said that “Individualism…must disappear in Cuba.” He told the tale of the Havana doctors who demanded payment before entering rural Cuba to help the sick. He imagined replacing them with doctors who were drawn from the peasantry and would be “immediately and unreservedly enthusiastic to assist their brothers.”

Rios was part of the 2013 medical mission to Sierra Leone, where doctors from all over the globe came to stop the Ebola outbreak. Rios told the team that they would be welcomed back to Cuba as heroes after they had returned from Sierra Leone. Rios claims that he received a modest stipend to help pay his expenses. However, foreign medical staff were given generous compensation.

In 2000, the myth that Cuban doctors are selfless healers began to crumble when two missionaries in Zimbabwe wrote a letter to an airline employee with the handwritten words. kidnapped. The Castro regime was denounced and they were brought back to Cuba, potentially to be sentenced. They ended up in America and received political asylum.

The 2020 report will be available. Human Rights WatchThe Cuban medical missions were “violate,” said Dr. [doctors’]Fundamental rights” include “the right of privacy, freedom to express and association and liberty and movement among other things. The organization noted that doctors are often pressured into taking part in these missions. They fear that retaliation will be incurred if they refuse to. Furthermore, governments who accept Cuban assistance including the harsh conditions imposed in Cuba could become complicit with human rights violations.

2005 was the year that the George W. Bush administration established the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program. This program grants health care workers stationed abroad permanent residence status. It was as simple as that. Send it to an American Embassy. More than 7,000Medical professionals took advantage of this program.

2014. New York TimesPublished an op-ed Page EditorCalling for an end the program. It stated that the US immigration policy should not “exacerbate the brain loss of an enemy nation.” This means that doctors’ rights to choose where and how they live must be considered in line with the best interests of the Cuban government.

Rios was transferred to Mexico’s military base after his mission in Sierra Leone. A group of doctors sent him to Mexico with them, where they purchased some phones cards. They could then connect with family members back home. He made his escape. Rios got a job in a Mexican pharmacy, and began saving to buy a coyote for him to enter the U.S. Rios was taken into custody by border officers and held at an immigration detention facility for 42 days. He was released and could return to Miami with his family.

One group of Cuban doctors defected in 2018, leaving behind their medical missions. suedThe Pan American Health Organization is part of World Health Organization. It assists in human trafficking. They also earn $75 million by serving as middle men.

Medical missions serve primarily as a means of selling Cuban healthcare services overseas. How does health care work for island residents?

Julio Cesar Alfonso heads Solidarity Without Borders in Miami, an organization that assists Cuban doctors who fled. He says that there are two health care systems in Cuba—one that is used by the majority of regular citizens, and another that is reserved for tourists and the Cuban elite.

Cuban defense lawyers often blame the U.S. Trade Embargo, in force since 1962, for any shortcomings that Cuban healthcare has. However, the Cuban hospitals are in terrible conditionMore to do with the lack of essential health care supplies that are easily available in other countries. These are some examplesAs Antibiotics and Steroids. Cuban hospitals are also short of stretchers and beds. Water is not available for 6-12 hours each dayAt the Pandemic height.

What impact is the embargo having on Cuban healthcare? Since the 1992 Cuba Democracy Act was passed, medical products are technically exempted from the embargo. But the law does stipulate that U.S. companies need a license in order to sell to Cuba—and critics are correct to point out that this requirement adds red tape to the process. Cuba purchased total U.S. medical products 2003 to 2021Average annual sales of $1.4million in a market worth $50-100,000,000 were However, it is not the licensing that causes such low sales. If companies could make enough money selling their products to Cuba, they would happily obtain licenses to do so. Cuba is in severe currency crisis because it has little to no goods or services the rest of the globe wants except for the U.S.

Advocates of Cuban healthcare often point to the low infant mortality rate of Cuba as proof of their success. Nicholas Kristof wrote in 2019: “How can this be possible?” “An American infant, according to official statistics, is nearly 50 percent more likely than a Cuban child to die.” New York Times ColumnThis article examined one of the most frequently repeated figures to support the assertion that Cuba has something special about its health care system.

Kristof admitted that “the numbers should be taken with some skepticism”, but chose to interpret them nonetheless in support his priors. He said that Cuba has “Medicare for All” that so many Americans dream about.

Cuba uses a number of strategies to reduce its infant mortality rate. For example, it ensures that any fetuses with a lower chance of survival outside the womb are never allowed to do so. There’s significant evidenceCubanDoctors coerce women to abort fetuses with abnormalities that are revealed by routine ultrasounds.

Vincent Geloso (assistant professor of economics, George Mason University) co-authored an article in 2018 arguing that Cuba has a low rate for infant mortality. The Misclassification resultsUse a different indicator called “late-fetal deaths”.

Even though there were reports that Cuba had failed to fight COVID-19 early on, this was not true. Cuba had been able to defeat the disease by August 2021. It New York Times Was ReportingCuba’s “reeling health system” was characterized by low oxygen levels, an insufficient supply of syringes, overcrowded mortuaries and crematories and a “deadly state”. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel blamed the U.S. trade embargo.

Sánchez thinks that, as the Castros’ health care myth crumbles, ordinary Cubans are beginning to realize that they are not threatened by foreign enemies, as the regime propaganda machine has claimed for decades.

He said that the Cuban government is the only enemy of Cubans.

Authored and hosted by Daniel Raisbeck, Jim Epstein; Narrated by Daniel Raisbeck. Edited by John Osterhoudt. Camera by Epstein. Osterhoudt. Isaac Reese. Meredith Bragg. Graphic design by Nathalie. Animations by Reese. Additional editing support by Regan Taylor. Alexandra De Caires. Translation assistance. María Jose Inojosa Salina; EnglishCaitlin Petty created the subtitles

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