Cuban Healthcare: A news chronology

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

2007

January 3: Cuba registered the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America with 5.3 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2006, only surpassed on the continent by Canada, local dailies revealed. Granma daily quoted sources from the National Statistics Department of the Public Health Ministry as saying that the Caribbean country reached its lowest mortality rate in under one-year old children in history, and was among the 30 world nations with best results. (Prensa Latina, 3/1/07)

January 18: A Quebec company is offering to arrange speedy health-care services for a fee in Cuba, but patients have to book their own flights. Services Sante International charges $200 per medical file and patients must make their own flight and insurance arrangements. President and founder Lucie Vermette said that hip replacements cost between $5,000 and $6,000 and cataract operations cost $2,000 in Cuba. The Cuban doctors also do esthetic surgery. (Canadian Press, 18/1/07)

February 21: Cuba's renowned health service is in a frail condition. It has been a considerable source of pride for the communist authorities since the revolution of 1959, achieving infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable to America's. But it is now badly short of medicines, instruments and equipment, while many hospitals languish in disrepair. Doctors can earn more as taxi drivers, while anecdotal evidence suggests growing numbers of medics are trying to flee the country.  According to the American Public Health Association, the blockade effectively prevents Cuba from purchasing nearly 50 per cent of new drugs, including those for cancer, diabetes, heart disease and asthma. Critics of Fidel Castro, who was forced by ill health to retire from public life six months ago and hand over power to his brother Raul, argue that his refusal to reform the state-controlled economy and its convoluted rules has helped impoverish the country. The medical profession is facing further instability thanks to Castro's extraordinary initiative to export 30,000 doctors and dentists to 68 countries around the world, earning vital revenue for them and the nation. Some medics in Havana say the absence of so many colleagues has led to increases in waiting times at hospitals and clinics; they also lament the poorer quality of new trainees. The government insists that with another 70,000 doctors at home the expatriates can be spared. (The Daily Telegraph, 21/2/07) 

March 12: Cuban First Vice President Raul Castro visited the Pinar del Rio Ophthalmology Center, the newest facility in the province to treat eye ailments. Raul Castro praised the people of Pinar del Rio for their hard work in making the program a success in the province. In the visitor's book Raul wrote his congratulations "in the name of Fidel, who has been the chief promoter of the Miracle Mission." The Pinar del Rio center is located within the Abel Santamaria Cuadrado Hospital and began functioning on January 17. Some 200 patients are served daily. The center provides general services as well as specialized care for glaucoma, cataracts, retina and cornea problems, refractory surgery, oculoplastic surgery and neuro-ophthalmology. Dr. Osmany Correa Rojas, director of the center and coordinator of the Miracle Mission in the province, said that the new facility is equipped with the latest diagnosis and surgical equipment. Thanks to new investments, Pinar del Rio has also extended its eye care network. There are operating rooms in the Leon Cuervo Rubio Hospital, also in the provincial capital, as well as the Hospital in San Cristobal and the polyclinics in the municipalities of La Palma and Sandino. (Granma, 13/3/07)

March 23: Cuba is trying to wipe out tuberculosis (TB) by year 2015, in line with worldwide efforts in this regard. According to Dr. Edilberto Gonzalez Ochoa, from the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute Tuberculosis Research Group, the island has the potential to achieve the goal even earlier, between 2010 and 2014. He explained that Cuba boasts 6.5 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants. By worldwide standards, TB is deemed eliminated as a social problem when the index is five or below. During a scientific workshop on TB held in Las Tunas, 416 miles east from Havana, expert Gonzalez said that in 1959, when the Revolution triumphed, there were 65 cases of tuberculosis for every 100,000 inhabitants. A Public Health Ministry program implemented since 1962 contributed to decrease the index gradually. (Prensa Latina, 23/3/07)

April 1: The number of cancer cases in Cuba has risen due to smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol, and in some provinces on the communist island it now constitutes the main cause of death by disease, the local press reported. The official daily Juventud Rebelde reported that, according to data gathered by the National Statistics Office, malignant tumors caused 168.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2005 and 171.5 per 100,000 last year, figures that are considered to be high. "We have traffic accidents in first place (and) cancer in Cuba is in third place as a cause of death," Marta Osorio, the head of the Clinical and Chemical Therapy Research Department at the National Oncology and Radiobiology Institute, told the daily. Osorio said that "alcoholism and smoking are two big social health problems in Cuba," along with other risk factors such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension. (EFE, 1/4/07)

April 13: Some 357,910 children, ranging from one month to two years, 11 months and 29 days of age, will be administered a first dose of a vaccine during the initial stage of the polio campaign, running until April 19th, said doctor Miguel Angel Galindo, head of the National Immunization Program of the Public Health Ministry. A second dose will be administered during a second phase of the anti-polio action, which will run from May 25th through 31st. Meanwhile the vaccine will be reactivated on 141,646 nine-year old children. The Cuban campaign takes place in the context of the 45th anniversary of the declaration of Cuba as the first country in the Americas free of poliomyelitis, a disease causing disability or death. (ACN, 13/4/07)

April 22: Cubans take pride in an average life expectancy roughly similar to that of the United States. They ascribe it to free medical care, mild climate, and a low-stress Caribbean lifestyle, which they believe make up for the hardships and shortages they suffer. "Sometimes you have all you want to eat and sometimes you don't," said Raquel Naring, a 70-year-old retired gas station attendant. "But there aren't elderly people sleeping on the street like other places." Cuba's average life expectancy is 77.08 years — second in Latin America after Puerto Rico and more than 11 years above the world average, according to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book. (AP, 22/4/07)

May 31: A vaccine against influenza for older people currently benefits 18.7 per cent of the population of the central province of Villa Clara where the life expectancy rate is 78 years old, the highest throughout Cuba. Over 150,000 senior citizens over 60 years old are given the vaccine in healthcare districts and homes for the elderly, Doctor Mario Sanchez, provincial head of the healthcare department in charge of the senior citizen care, told the press. (ACN, 31/5/07)

June 9: Cuba has begun its second national campaign against the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, the dengue transmitting agent, a defensive operation to preserve human lives. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, in coordination with local residents, will carry out hygienic-health tasks to avoid mosquito propagation, including the cleaning up of dumps and green areas, Granma daily reported. (Prensa Latina, 9/6/07)

June 10: Thirty percent of men and more than 31 percent of women are overweight in Cuba, according to an official study. The investigation was carried out by the Institute of Food Hygiene and Nutrition in joint collaboration with the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Juventud Rebelde newspaper reported. The survey carried out to analyze the nutritional status of the population revealed that one fourth of Cubans have a higher than normal rate of adiposity, indicating higher risk associated to some chronic diseases. Experts alerted there is a close relationship between the nutritional status and the incidence of several pathologies like arterial hypertension, squeamish cardiopathy, diabetes mellitus and certain types of cancer, among others, the newspaper said. (Juventud Rebelde, 6/6/07)

July 9: Infestation of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito considered the primary vector for dengue fever, is on the rise in several regions of the island due to high summer temperatures and rains. According to the weekly "Trabajadores", since last June more than 60 health districts in the country have reported the presence of the vector and 1,320 breeding foci have been detected, 145 of them in workplaces. (EFE, 9/7/07)

July 20: Cuban Deputy Health Minister Gonzalo Estevez said that Cuba has in place a reinforced security system to quickly detect avian flu, a disease that has hit several countries in Southeast Asia. Cuba relies on its highly qualified health personnel, who are trained to tackle a possible epidemic. The country has invested several million dollars in a program to detect and control the disease. This program also monitors the evolution of the pathology in the world. (Radio Habana Cuba, 20/7/07)

October 7: Cuba will create a school attached to the International Society of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology (SICOT), the fifth such center in the world. That action, experts said, is an acknowledgment of Cuba's development in that field of medicine. The school will be located at the Frank País Hospital, in Havana, and will contribute to promoting professional exchange with a score of SICOT member countries. In addition to upgrading doctors' qualification, the center will also improve the teaching quality and rank of Cuban and foreign professors. (Cuba Headlines, 7/10/07)

October 16: Cuban authorities announced a national campaign against the mosquito aedes aegypti, transmitter of dengue fever.  The campaign "No truce with the enemy", was announced in public media after several cases of dengue were reported in Havana hospitals. (EFE, AIN, 16/10/07).

October 28: It may not be fun anywhere but visiting the dentist in Cuba is a still unhappier prospect marked by a lack of dentists, technicians, materials and even reclining chairs, an official newspaper reported. In Cuba's second internal criticism in as many weeks, a team of reporters from Juventud Rebelde, fanned out to 22 dental clinics in various provinces only to discover the problems were the norm, not exception in the free system of more than 1,000 facilities. "The majority of the 22 clinics lacked adequate professional and technical personnel, more than half had passed through crisis due to a lack of water, dentist chairs, materials to fill cavities, significant delays for dentures," according to the article headlined "Dentistry Dilemma." Other problems included services provided through underground clinics -- at a price -- and patients waiting for hours in offices with little air conditioning and few toilet facilities. The report followed by just a week a similar critical article on health care in general and publication of a story in the Communist Party newspaper, Granma, detailing teacher shortages and other problems in the education system. (Reuters, 28/10/07)

December 1: Currently there are 375,095 registered cases of diabetes in Cuba, a figure that could reach 624,000 by 2010, affirmed Dr. Oscar Díaz, director of the National Institute of Endocrinology, a special center devoted to treatment of this condition that causes the death of three million people a year worldwide. Diabetes is a disease that is on the rise. According to facts broadcast on the Cuban "Roundtable" TV program addressing the issue, 246 million people in the world are currently living with the affliction, a figure that is expected to reach 380 million by 2025. Cuba has Diabetic Treatment Centres in all provinces except Sancti Spíritus and the special municipality of the Isle of Youth, where patients are taught to understand and control their disease in order to live independent and useful lives. (Granma International, 1/12/07)

December 6: The vice-minister of Public Health, Joaquín García, said that, "the reorganization of medical consulting offices to compensate for the doctors who went on internationalist missions has not worked properly." "The presence of doctors and nurses in the medical offices has not been guaranteed as promised," added García in the Roundtable television program, where the minister of health, José Ramón Balaguer, was also present. This is the first time that authorities recognize publicly the existence of vacancies as a result of doctors and nurses being sent abroad, as well as its impact on public health. (EER, 6/12/07)