Tuesday, January 4, 2011
A Cuban Fairy Tale From PBS
What public television didn't tell you about health care in Castro's socialist state.
In his memoir covering four years in Cuba as a correspondent for Spanish Television, Vicente Botín tells about a Havana woman who was frustrated by the doctor shortage in the country. She hung a sheet on her balcony with the words "trade me to Venezuela." When the police arrived she told them: "Look, compañeros, I'm as revolutionary as the next guy, but if you want to see a Cuban doctor, you have to go to Venezuela."
That story was not in the three-part report by Ray Suarez on Cuban health care that aired on PBS's "NewsHour" last week. Nor was the one about the Cuban whose notice of his glaucoma operation arrived in 2005, three years after he died and five years after he had requested it. Nor was there any coverage of the town Mr. Botín writes about close to the city of Holguín, that in 2006 had one doctor serving five clinics treating 600 families. In fact, it was hard to recognize the country that Mr. Suarez claimed to be describing.
The series was taped in Cuba with government "cooperation" so there is no surprise that it went heavy on the party line. Still, there was something disturbing about how Mr. Suarez allowed himself to be used by the police state, dutifully reciting its dubious claims as if he were reporting great advances in medical science.
Castro's military dictatorship marks 52 years in power next week. But the "revolution" is dead. A new generation of angry, young Cubans now vents on Internet blogs and through music, mocking the old man and his ruthless little brother. On Nov. 29, in the city of Santa Clara, hundreds of students launched a spontaneous protest when they were denied access to a televised soccer match they had paid to watch. What began as a demand for refunds soon turned to shouts of "freedom," "down with Fidel" and "down with socialism," according to press reports.
Cuban public health workers fumigate a street in Havana during a campaign against dengue fever.
Dissent is spreading in Cuba like dengue fever because daily life is so onerous. One of the best documented sources on this subject is the Botín narrative ("Los Funerales de Castro," 2009, available in Spanish only), which pulls back the curtain on "the Potemkin village" that foreigners see on official visits to Cuba. Behind the façade is desperate want. Food, water, transportation, access to health care, electricity, soap and toilet paper are all hard to come by. Even housing is in short supply, with multiple families wedged into single-family homes. The government tries to keep the lid on through repression. But in private there are no limits to the derision of the brothers Castro.
Americas Columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady debunks a health-care fable.
Mr. Suarez's report, by contrast, is like a state propaganda film. In one segment, an American woman named Gail Reed who lives in Cuba tells him that the government's claim of its people's longevity is due to a first-rate system of disease prevention. He then parrots the official line that Cuba's wealth of doctors is the key ingredient. What is more, he says, these unselfish revolutionary "foot soldiers" go on house calls. "It's aggressive preventive medicine," Mr. Suarez explains. "Homes are investigated, water quality checked, electrical plugs checked."
An abundance of doctors? Not in the Cuba Mr. Botín lived in. In 2006 the government claimed there were 65,000 doctors. That number, he says, was "a figure that many professionals considered inflated." When Cubans complained they couldn't get care, he notes that the state upped the number "magically" to 71,000 five months later. Given Fidel's habit of making things up, it's hard to know how many competent doctors the government has trained. But there is no disputing the fact that medics have been sent overseas in large numbers to earn hard currency for the regime. There is also no question that Cubans are paying the price at home.
As to doctors checking on water quality and electricity outlets, the PBS reporter might be surprised to learn that most Cuban homes have no running water or power on a regular basis. This is true even in the capital. In 2006, Mr. Botín says, a government minister admitted that 75.5% of the water pipes in Havana were "unusable" and "recognized that 60% of pumped water was lost before it made it to consumers." To "fix" the problem, the city began providing water in each neighborhood only on certain days. Havana water is also notoriously contaminated. Foreigners drink only the bottled stuff, which Cubans can't afford. In the rest of the country the quality and quantity of the water supply is even less reliable.
Mr. Suarez also reported that, according to Ms. Reed, Cuba is suffering an "embargo of medicine." But there is no embargo on food or medicine. The problem is that the government lacks the money to pay for new medicines that are protected under patent.
Reporters who want access to Cuba know that they have to toe the Castro line. I get that. Mr. Suarez must figure that his American audience does not.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
Thursday, January 3, 2008
DESOLATION
Catching a cold in Cuba
Trip to beautiful island offers harsh lessons about shortages of medicine, food and transportation
By SALLY MELCHER JARVIS, Correspondent
Sunday News
Published: Dec 30, 2007 12:08 AM EST
HAVANA, CUBA - It wasn't much of a cold; just the kind that would get better by itself in a week. In the meantime it was a nuisance with a cough and stuffy nose. A little over-the-counter remedy would help.
It was November 2007. We were in Havana, the capital of Cuba, with a humanitarian group organized by the North Museum of Natural History & Science. Our role was to bring medical and school supplies in our suitcases. Americans are allowed in Cuba; they aren't permitted to spend any money there. We prepaid for our trip including every meal and tip.
There were no over-the-counter remedies to be had. I asked the guide what Cubans did if they had a cold. The guide said that a Cuban would go to the doctor — a visit free of charge — who would write a prescription for aspirin. However, there would be no way to fill the prescription.
We visited a pharmacy later in the trip. Behind the counter five well-dressed Cuban women waited to serve, but the shelves were empty. The only items in sight were the monthly ration of sanitary napkins, 10 permitted per Cuban woman per month.
I then understood the value of the over-the-counter medical supplies we had brought to a Catholic charity.
It was like being in a dream where two different things can happen at the same time. We were in a two-tier system: one for the privileged (tourists, for example) and the other for those who lived and worked in socialist Cuba.
Our luxurious state-owned hotel was closed to Cubans, except for those who worked there. A Cuban could not even come in for a meal.
There were two levels of money. One, the CUC, was used by foreign tourists and convertible to other currencies. The other, the peso, was for Cubans, and worth 5 percent of the "better" currency.
There were two levels of stores, one that took pesos and another that took CUC money. The peso stores had very little to sell. The stores for CUC money were marginally better. Even a modest chain store in the United States could outshine the "better" store.
There certainly were no traffic jams. With few privately owned cars and limited public transportation, many people rely on hitchhiking. In one five-mile stretch of a major highway I counted 20 people hoping for rides. In the same five-mile stretch the traffic consisted of one taxi, one bus, one pedestrian, two horse-drawn carts, three motorcycles, seven cars, 11 bicycles and 13 pickup trucks. This included both sides of the four-lane highway. About 15 percent are 1950s-era American cars still using leaded gas.
Coupons are given out each month for food such as coffee and rice. The coupons run out after two weeks, so it is necessary to buy food with the monthly salary. Food at the farmers' market is expensive. So if a person does not use the coffee ration, that coffee is traded for something else
On balance, we saw no people sleeping in doorways. We learned that there was 95 percent literacy. There was no rent to pay, no medical insurance needed — but no aspirin.
Cuba is a beautiful country with limestone soil as rich as Lancaster County and a mild climate year-round. The people are friendly, well-dressed and polite. Havana is a stunning Spanish colonial city with tree-lined plazas and colonnaded homes. If only the windows were not patched, the pillars rotted and the faded walls stained with mildew. The government has restored a number of homes, but the overall effect is one of decay.
The decay and lack of merchandise are blamed on the American embargo, in place since 1960. One wall poster in a cigar factory called the American embargo "genocide." Our country's story in Cuba is not an admirable one. Still, I wondered if a socialist government in 50 years could not come up with something better for its people.
It was depressing to see attractive and intelligent people restricted and denied opportunity in such an appealing land only 90 miles away from our country.
The accident of birth has put me in a free country and I have never been so grateful.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
MICHAEL MOORE CHALLENGED ON HEALTH CARE IN CUBA
"All the world health organizations or whatever [sic] have confirmed that if there's one thing they do right in Cuba, it's health care. And there's very little debate about that."
-- Michael Moore
Reporter John Stossel of 20/20 has the following interesting observations about Michael Moore's claims concerning the state of Cuban healthcare in his "documentary" Sicko:
1. As we previously reported, Moore did not visit representative hospitals, but only elite institutions.
2. The United Nations report that Moore relies upon to support his claims of medical nirvana in Cuba did not gather any data. It simply repeated data given to it by the Cuban government itself, a government that is a crazed dictatorship with no checks on its power or accuracy.
3. Cuba's fetal mortality rates are grossly understated because of the national practice of aborting sick fetuses before they are born and of classifying a fetus which perishes within a few hours of being born as never having been born at all.
4. Moore stated: "All the independent health organizations in the world, and even our own CIA, believes that the Cubans have a pretty good health system. And they do, in fact, live longer than we do." Stossel asked the CIA, and it stated that it never made such a conclusion about Cuban health care; it stated that its data shows Americans live significantly longer on average than Cubans.
5. When challenged with these facts by Stossel, Moore tried to change the subject: "Let's stick to Canada and Britain and this stuff, I think you should challenge me on these things, and I'll give you my answer."
The prosecution rests.
