Cuban Health Care

Cuban Health Care PDF Author: Don Fitz
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
ISBN: 1583678603
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Cuban Health Care

Cuban Health Care PDF Author: Don Fitz
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
ISBN: 1583678603
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Healthcare without Borders

Healthcare without Borders PDF Author: John M. Kirk
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813055474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cuba has more medical personnel serving abroad—over 50,000 in 66 countries—than all of the G-7 countries combined and more than the World Health Organization. For the last five decades, they have been a leading force in the developing world, providing humanitarian aid (or “cooperation,” as Cuba’s communist government prefers) and initiating programs for preventative care and medical training. In Healthcare without Borders, John Kirk examines the role of Cuban medical teams in disaster relief, biotechnology joint ventures, and in the Latin American School—the largest medical faculty in the world. He looks at their responses to various crises worldwide, including the 1960 earthquake in Chile, the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, the earthquake that wracked Haiti in 2010 and the subsequent cholera outbreak, and the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Kirk issues an informative and enlightening corrective for what he describes as the tendency of the industrialized world’s media to ignore or underreport this phenomenon as one of the positive aspects of the Cuban revolutionary process. In the process, Kirk explores the philosophical underpinnings of human rights and access to medical care at the core of Cuba’s medical internationalism programs and partnerships.

Primary Health Care in Cuba

Primary Health Care in Cuba PDF Author: Linda M. Whiteford
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9780742559943
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Cuban Medical Internationalism

Cuban Medical Internationalism PDF Author: J. Kirk
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230622224
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
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, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898

Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 PDF Author: Katherine Hirschfeld
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412809193
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Revolutionary Doctors

Revolutionary Doctors PDF Author: Steve Brouwer
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583672680
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Revolutionary Doctors gives readers a first-hand account of Venezuela's innovative and inspiring program of community healthcare, designed to serve--and largely carried out by--the poor themselves. Drawing on long-term participant observations as well as in-depth research, Brouwer tells the story of Venezuela's Integral Community Medicine program, in which doctor-teachers move into the countryside and poor urban areas to recruit and train doctors from among peasants and workers. Such programs were first developed in Cuba, and Cuban medical personnel play a key role in Venezuela today as advisors and organizers. This internationalist model has been a great success--Cuba is a world leader in medicine and medical training--and Brouwer shows how the Venezuelans are now, with the aid of their Cuban counterparts, following suit. But this program is not without its challenges. It has faced much hostility from traditional Venezuelan doctors as well as all the forces antagonistic to the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions. Despite the obstacles it describes, Revolutionary Doctors demonstrates how a society committed to the well-being of its poorest people can actually put that commitment into practice, by delivering essential healthcare through the direct empowerment of the people it aims to serve"--Provided by publisher.

Revolutionary Medicine

Revolutionary Medicine PDF Author: P. Sean Brotherton
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822352052
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

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

Healing the Masses

Healing the Masses PDF Author: Julie M. Feinsilver
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520082982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Engaged but objective, this comprehensive study offers a rich mine of data to social scientists and health experts alike. . . . [It] will inform and surprise even the Cuba 'experts' inside Cuba . . . and may also help explain why the revolution has been able to endure."—Saul Landau, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington D.C. "Superbly researched. . . . Feinsilver's book is for anyone interested in understanding why Castro weathered the global anti-communist storm between 1989 and 1991 and in learning about how social policies can be effective in the Third World."—Susan Eckstein, Boston University "Feinsilver's book admirably reconstructs the capacity of Cuba's public health system to meet the health needs of its people. Her analysis of the evolution of Cuban government policy in the health field should be of particular interest to public health professionals in various countries. I have learned much from this book and am certain that others will too."—Jorge Domínguez, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University "Whatever the political views of the readers, Julie Feinsilver's scholarly analysis of the Cuban health care system in the Castro period, within the framework of specifically Cuban health policy, will be exciting and rewarding reading. The view of the social policy process whereby a small, poor country managed to develop a complex health services infrastructure that zealously provided comprehensive medical care for the entire population and succeeded in daring adventures in the provision of medical care in a half dozen foreign countries as well, is a fascinating story. And most fascinating of all is the evidence that the care given was good!"—George A. Silver, Yale University

Social Relations and the Cuban Health Miracle

Social Relations and the Cuban Health Miracle PDF Author: Elizabeth Kath
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351489631
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
For Cuba's supporters, health is the most commonly cited evidence of the socialist system's success. Even critics often concede that this is the country's saving grace. Cuba's health statistics are indeed extraordinary. This small island outperforms virtually all of its neighboring countries and all countries of the same level of economic development. Some of its health statistics rival wealthy industrialized countries. Moreover, these health outcomes have resulted against all odds. Setting out to unravel this puzzle, the author finds that Cuba possesses an unusually high level of popular participation and cooperation in the implementation of health policy. This has been achieved with the help of a longstanding government that prioritizes public health, and has enough political influence to compel the rest of the community to do the same. On the other hand, popular participation in decision-making regarding health policy is minimal, which contrasts with the image of popular participation often promoted. Political elites design and impose health policy, allowing little room for other health sector groups to meaningfully contribute to or protest official decisions. This is a problem because aspects of health care that are important to those who use the system or work within it can be neglected if they do not fit within official priorities. The author remains, overall, supportive of health achievement in Cuba. The country's preventive arrangements, its collective prioritization of key health areas, the improvements in public access to health services through the expansion of health facilities and the provision of free universal care are among the accomplishments that set it apart. The sustainability and progress of these achievements, however, must involve open recognition and public discussion of weaker aspects of the health system.

Cuban Revolution in America

Cuban Revolution in America PDF Author: Teishan A. Latner
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146963547X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cuba's grassroots revolution prevailed on America's doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political establishment. In this groundbreaking book, historian Teishan A. Latner contends that in the era of decolonization, the Vietnam War, and Black Power, socialist Cuba claimed center stage for a generation of Americans who looked to the insurgent Third World for inspiration and political theory. As Americans studied the island's achievements in education, health care, and economic redistribution, Cubans in turn looked to U.S. leftists as collaborators in the global battle against inequality and allies in the nation's Cold War struggle with Washington. By forging ties with organizations such as the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party, and the Cuban American students of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and by providing political asylum to activists such as Assata Shakur, Cuba became a durable global influence on the U.S. Left. Drawing from extensive archival and oral history research and declassified FBI and CIA documents, this is the first multidecade examination of the encounter between the Cuban Revolution and the U.S. Left after 1959. By analyzing Cuba's multifaceted impact on American radicalism, Latner contributes to a growing body of scholarship that has globalized the study of U.S. social justice movements.