¿Cómo es posible que Cuba, siendo tan pobre, logre resultados tan notables en materia de salud?

¿Cómo es posible que Cuba, siendo tan pobre, logre resultados tan notables en materia de salud?

En un reciente 'paper' para el Health Policy and Planning, los economistas Vincent Geloso y Benjamin Powell, junto con el profesor de medicina Gilbert Berdine, tratan de arrojar algo de luz sobre esta cuestión, y la conclusión a la que llegan es que buena parte de su aparente éxito se debe a la manipulación estadística y a la represión estatal. En particular, tres son los mecanismos, directos o indirectos, que las autoridades cubanas utilizan regularmente para maquillar sus 'logros' sanitarios:

Usted puede leer todo el articulo haciendo click en el encabezado.

Then and Now : Medicine from 1950 to today.

The Truth about Cuba’s infant mortality rates.

A Cuban doctor explains the truth behind Cuba's infant mortality rates.

A Cuban obstetrician, who arrived recently from the island, was interviewed this week by Maria Elvira Salazar on her program "Maria Elvira Live," broadcast nightly on Mega TeVe in Miami.

In a dramatic testimony, the doctor told Maria Elvira about PAMI (Medical Attention Program for Infants), a program designed by the Castro regime to make sure that Cuba's infant mortality rates are kept low, because it represents a propaganda tool for the government.

When an ultrasound done during the pregnancy reveals that something could be wrong with the fetus, the woman is forced to have an abortion.

According to the doctor, further examination of the fetuses after these forced abortions, revealed that the problem was not as serious as it was diagnosed through the use of the ultrasound, and in some cases there was actually nothing wrong and the baby could have been born without complications and live a healthy life.

However, a forced abortion when a possible problem is diagnosed during the pregnancy eliminates the possibility of any of those babies dying after birth and impacting the infant mortality rate, which seems to be the only concern of the Cuban regime.

The doctor also made reference to the lack of treatment that is given to babies who are born prematurely.

He told of one time when he was on duty and a woman gave birth after only 26 weeks of pregnancy.

The doctor sent the baby to a neonatology ward at the hospital, but he died a few hours later.

The next day, he was called to a meeting with the hospital director, where he was told that he should have known by now that babies who are born so premature should not be sent to receive further care because, if they died, it would impact the mortality rate.

He said many premature babies are left to die without receiving any medical care and are later reported as stillborn, which doesn't impact the mortality rate.

He said he knew of cases of premature babies who were born alive and were put in a bag and placed in a closet to be sent later to the morgue as if they were born dead.

Since the Cuban government keeps a very close track of the performance of each doctor at Cuba's maternity hospitals, any doctor who has to report a death of a baby that would impact the infant mortality rate could get in trouble.

That is why many of them prefer to report a stillborn, than take the chance with what the system refers to as "non viable" babies.

Unfortunately, Michael Moore and all the other ignorant people who are always quoting Cuba's infant mortality rates as an example for the U.S. and other countries to follow, will continue to ignore the truth behind those rates.

Source: The Real Cuba

Click here to see a video of the Maria Elvira Program (In Spanish)

¿De que muere la gente en los hospitales cubanos?

En lo que parece ser una breve entrevista telefónica, Yoani Sánchez abordar el tema de la Salud pública en Cuba, tal vez motivada por uno de sus últimos artículos que ustedes pueden leer en esta página y que hemos publicado en su versión en Ingles.
Ahora con el titulo: “en los hospitales cubanos mueren mas gentes por falta de comida que por enfermedad” la periodista de ABC convierte esta entrevista en un articulo que rebela algunas realidades,- no todas-, de la Salud en Cuba. El artículo dice:
Cuba, además de ser un paraíso tropical de puertas para afuera, también es el edén de las estadísticas triunfales que sitúan a la isla en unos niveles de desarrollo cercanos a los del primer mundo. Pero están extremadamente maquilladas. La bloguera Yoani Sánchez -premio Ortega y Gasset 2008- cuenta a ABC, en conversación telefónica desde La Habana,"cómo se trata de no arrojar luz, de que no se sepa qué está en el lado negativo de la balanza". Pero hay una forma muy sencilla de conocerlo, con la experiencia personal.
"Cada año tengo que rehacer mi agenda porque la mayoría de mis amigos emigran. Por eso sé que la tasa es bastante alta". "Lo mismo ocurre con los abortos. Hasta hace dos años, era un método anticonceptivo legal, hasta los siete meses de gestación o incluso más". Ésta es una de las estadísticas que se incluyen en el grupo de las inexistentes o no publicables, al igual que los divorcios o los suicidios.
Por otra parte están las publicadas por los órganos oficiales que "no están sometidas al escrutinio público, ni a una prensa libre". "Son datos tan importantes como la natalidad y mortalidad infantil, personas que mueren antes de los 75 años por causas curables, tasa de subalimentación o el Índice de la Población Penal, que es el más alto de Suramérica", porque "en Cuba hay muchas cosas ilegales, prácticamente vivir es ilegal", afirma segura.
En lo que respecta a la mortalidad infantil, expone que "con solo los casos que yo conozco de niños muertos menores de un año, la cifra no da". "Pertenece a la cotidianidad las historias de bebés que fallecen después de nacer y se inscriben como nacido muerto".
Sin embargo, la cara más dura del engaño está en la sanidad. El número de profesionales médicos se ha reducido alarmantemente -de cada cinco consultorios, sólo queda uno- y el material sanitario básico suele brillar por su ausencia. "Cuando operamos a mi hijo de apendicitis tuve que llevar desde el hilo de sutura hasta las sábanas". Por no hablar de la comida, "pues en algunos hospitales se muere más gente por la poca cantidad de alimento que recibe que por enfermedad".
Para terminar, Yoani Sánchez sentencia: "Los cubanos estamos inundados en números. Números de supuestas cosechas que nunca vemos aparecer en nuestros refrigeradores, un supuesto bienestar que nunca llega a nuestras casas... Más que conocer estadísticas fiables, queremos resultados reales y palpables, beneficios y posibilidades".
Fuente: ABC.es

Surely, we can aim higher than Cuba.

By: Joe Hvilivitzky.
Dave Thomas is, of course, entitled to wring his hands over what he perceives to be the slide of our beloved health-care system into the clutches of private enterprise, as expressed in his letter Feb. 23 bemoaning the "P3 partnership" for the planned hospital in St. Catharines. There are credible arguments on both sides.
What I take issue with is his pointing to Cuba as a shining example of a system we should emulate.
While Cuba indeed has widespread literacy and universal health care, neither was sufficient to dissuade 1.5 million people from fleeing the country to the United States since the "people's" Revolution in 1959. And the reason citizens must flee is because they're not allowed to leave of their volition. Nor do they have free elections (unless, of course, they wish to vote for a Castro), nor do they have free access to the Internet, nor do they have anything resembling a free press, nor do they have freedom of religion.
Those poor foreign students Mr. Thomas refers to, getting free university education in Cuba? I think it's safe to surmise there's more indoctrination than education going on there.
Mr. Thomas says Cuba has the lowest infant mortality rates in the Americas. However, a report in the Miami Herald in January 2007 raises disquieting doubts about those figures, both in their compilation and in medical practices involving forced abortions.
(By the way: If the Cuban health-care system is so good, why did they have to fly in a physician from Madrid to treat Fidel when he became ill in 2006?)
As for all those Cuban doctors working in poor countries, at least 20,000 health professionals are working in Venezuela, but rather than altruism they're there in return for oil shipments to Cuba. It makes one wonder if the quality of care back on the island isn't closer to the conditions Canadians endure in the average hospital emergency unit here.
Despite Cuba's natural beauty, its wealth of resources and its wonderful people, it continues to be run by a couple of Marxist thugs, Fidel and Raul Castro, clinging fanatically to a failed ideology.
Let Canada look to other countries for examples of successful health-care systems - ones that aren't repressive regimes that employ violence to spread the evil of communism, responsible for so much misery and death in the 20th century.
Joe Hvilivitzky, Chippawa