Cuban Healthcare 2008-- a news chronology

(From stories compiled by FOCAL, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas)

January 4: Cuba reported Latin America's lowest infant mortality rate in 2007, with 5.3 children under one year dead out of every 1,000 live births, official sources revealed. According to the UN Report on the State of the World's Children 2007, the world infant mortality rate was 52 deaths for each 1,000 live births, and Latin America's was 26. In western Africa, the figure was 108. (Prensa Latina, 4/1/08)

January 18: Infant mortality rate continues to drop in Cuba, which now shares with Canada the best result in this regard in the Americas, both with 5.3 deaths per every 1000 live births. Six out of the country's 14 provinces finished 2007 with a rate below the national average while in 21 of the island's 169 municipalities the infant mortality rate was zero, Granma reported. (CAN, 18/1/08)

January 23: Seizing on its proximity to Canada, Cuba has partnered with Choice Medical Services to attract medical tourists. Cuba has also partnered with similar firms in Germany and Spain, cracking into the Western market by highlighting its excellent health-care system and low cost of care. According to Choice Medical Services, a hip replacement in Cuba costs about $10,000, compared with $39,000 in the US. In 2007, the Caribbean nation hosted nearly 20,000 medical tourists, according to Cubanacan Tourism and Health, the umbrella organization that promotes Cuba's health tourism facilities. (The Globe & Mail, 23/1/08)

March 25: Nearly 500,000 children -from one month to two years of age- will be immunized as of March 28 during the 47th national anti-poliomyelitis vaccination campaign underway in Cuba. Some 343,195 under three-year-old toddlers will receive two oral doses. On May 9-15, those children will receive the second doses and, also in the same date, the vaccine will be reactivated for 141,857 nine-year-old children. Granma newspaper published that since the first anti-polio campaign in 1962, more than 76 million doses of the vaccine have been administrated to children, so all of Cuba’s population under 61 years old is currently protected against that disease. (Prensa Latina, 25/3/08)

March 25: Cuba has lifted a rule that forced people to pick up prescription drugs from a pharmacy assigned by the state, adding to steps by President Raul Castro to cut excessive regulation in the Communist country. Public health sources said that Cubans can now buy prescription drugs at any pharmacy. Until now, they had to fill prescriptions at a single pharmacy attached to hospitals or local clinics, a bureaucratic measure introduced during a severe crisis in the 1990s when resources were scarce due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. "People used to have to go to our pharmacy and if there wasn't the right medicine or it would take a while to make, they would have to come back even if they lived far away," said Maribel, a Havana doctor. "Now they can go wherever without getting new prescriptions or having to travel long distances." The restriction was unpopular and Raul Castro has set about eliminating some of the "excessive regulations" governing all aspects of Cuban society since he took office as president. "There were lots of complaints. The authorities want people to be happy," said a Havana pharmacy manager, who did not want to be named because she was not authorized to speak to a reporter. (Reuters, 25/3/08)

April 8: President Raul Castro's government has begun to reorganize Cuba's family doctor program, a pillar of the communist country's universal free health care system. More than half the offices will be closed and staffing at the remainder increased, medical sources said of the health reform. Cubans complain that the family doctor program has been short on staff since the government began sending thousands of doctors to Venezuela in 2000. In the provinces, family doctor offices will now be staffed by a doctor and nurse the entire day, instead of just in the mornings, health care sources said. "There has been a lot of movement in recent weeks. They are painting the offices, developing a system to insure a proper lunch for staff and more equipment is arriving at the clinics as well," a nurse in central Cuba said. In Havana, a sprawling city of 2.2 million people, there is a similar plan, but it will take more time due to a lack of doctors and nurses and will include for now traditional offices with a doctor only in the morning. (Reuters, 8/4/08)

April 25: Through the use of various actions from the bottom up, Cuba is planning to revitalize its Primary Health Care System (APS), which has been affected by organizational flaws, poor salaries, and the sending of physicians on aid missions to other countries. APS National Director Cristina Luna said that the (community level) family doctor and the polyclinics (the level prior to hospital level) are going to play an important role in order to attain "excellent health care" in Cuba. During a recent National Scientific Drive for Family Medicine held in Havana, Luna presented a plan aimed at strengthening the APS. Luna said that the polyclinics should solve 80 per cent of the community's health problems, and that this requires personnel trained in the installed technologies and provision of quality service, as well as the stability of cadres (supervisory personnel). She explained that the family doctor service is being divided into three categories. The first category of service will be provided by a physician and a nurse during an eight-hour period. The second will be provided only by nurses, preferably nurses with a bachelor's degree. According to the official, category three service will have a physician and a nurse available 24 hours as well as equipment, greater decision-making authority, and a module with different types of medication in keeping with the number of inhabitants and the morbidity rate. (Notimex, 25/4/08)

May 9: Nearly half a million Cuban children will be vaccinated against poliomyelitis in the second stage of this year's immunization campaign, which runs until May 15. A founder and current consultant for the National Immunization Program, Dr. Miguel Angel Galindo, told the press that before the end of the campaign, a second dose of the vaccine (two drops taken orally) will be given to more than 343,000 children who are between one month and three years of age. In addition, the vaccine will be reactivated among nearly 142,000 nine-year-olds during that same period, said Dr. Galindo. (Ahora, 9/5/08)

May 10: Cuba had a total of 9,304 diagnosed HIV and AIDS cases as of December 2007, with the majority of the patients being males, a high-level health official said. Some 80 percent of the carriers of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are men, and 84 percent of these men are homosexuals, National Center for the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV director Rosaida Ochoa said. The health official discussed the island's AIDS situation at a press conference in Havana ahead of the celebration on May 17 of International Day Against Homophobia. As of October 2007, Cuba had 9,039 people infected with HIV, of whom 3,427 were sick and more than 3,000 others were receiving antiretroviral medications to fight the disease. Four men are infected with HIV/AIDS for every woman who has contracted the disease in Cuba, leading health officials to focus this year's prevention campaign on men who have sex with other men, while still maintaining the program that seeks to prevent the disease's spread among women, Ochoa said. A study conducted last year by the National Statistics Office found that HIV carriers experienced greater social rejection because of their sexual orientation than from being infected with the disease, the health official said. (EFE, 11/5/08)