[NYTr] RHC Analysis: 2007 - Health in Cuba Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:10:44 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba http://www.radiohc.cu/ingles/portada.htm RHC Analysis: 2007 - Health Care in Cuba Though much is still to be done, Cuba has many accomplishments to show the world in the field of health this year. The main challenge for the Cuban Public Health system in 2007 was to maintain the permanent commitment to improving the population's quality of life and to achieving excellence in medical services. Today, it shows results that speak for themselves with regard to the efficiency of strategies and implemented programs. Allow me to mention two of the most significant -although not the most important- achievements: that the infant mortality rate was maintained at around 5 per every one thousand live births, and that life expectancy reached 77 years, with an increasingly large number of elderly people with physical and health conditions adequate for a useful and agreeable life. These achievements are part of Cuba's plan to reach the level of first world nations by 2015, on indicators including maternal mortality, and to establish better control of risk factors affecting Cubans' health. The strategies devised by the Cuban Public Health Ministry as governing body, and the strategies drawn up according to the already mentioned objectives, detail specific actions for all sectors of society. The recovery of the institutions pertaining to the Ministry of Public Health was one of the ways of improving medical attention at the various levels of the system. Excelling in this effort was the extension of rehabilitation services to all of the country's polyclinics, as well as the development of constructions to complete the refurbishing of all health care centers. At the end of 2007, more than 1,900 construction works had been carried out with this purpose, resulting in 233 remodelled and expanded polyclinics and 5 hospitals that underwent major repairs, which are now full in operation with all services and specialties. More than 110 of the country's 169 municipalities have a rebuilt policlinic, equipped with the most modern technologies in terms of ultrasound, X- rays, optometry, ophthalmology, and electrocardiography. All this without abandoning the commitments -undertaken with Venezuela within the context of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas- for the strengthening of the second and third stages of the Barrio Adentro program. Throughout 2007, the Cuban health care system confirmed that chronic non-infectious diseases are the primary cause of death, among which cardiovascular diseases stand out. In response to this situation, public health authorities and social organizations are giving impetus to a comprehensive promotion and prevention program aimed at improving the way of life and eating habits of the Cuban people. Programs to detect cervical-uterine, breast and prostate cancers continued to have national priority, as well as the attention given to the network of institutions that provide treatment for all cancers, of notable incidence on the island. These diseases receive permanent monitoring from the public health centers located in the areas where patients live, as part of a primary health care system considered by experts as one of the best in the world. Cuban biotechnology deserves a similar opinion, with first rate results in developing vaccines for human and veterinary use, new means of diagnostics, monoclonal antibodies, medicines, interferon and other bio-products, in all a total of 38 products to improve the health of the people. We should remember that, each year, recombinant streptokinase, the only one of its kind in the world, saves the lives of around 400 patients that have suffered heart attacks with a single dose. Also worth mentioning are the results obtained with the Hepatitis B vaccine, the application of which has made it possible to immunize all Cubans under 25 years of age against this disease. Cuba's public health efforts are spread well beyond the island's borders to dozens of nations around the globe. By the end of 2007, more than 37 thousand Cuban health volunteers, among them 18 thousand doctors, were offering their services and solidarity in 79 countries. Venezuela stood out among these countries, where medical brigades have already saved the lives of 57 thousand people and have considerably improved its population's basic health indicators. These doctors are in charge of 6 thousand offices, 388 Centers for Integral Diagnostics, and 492 Rehabilitation Rooms, and are also dealing with the training of 17 thousand Venezuelan students in the specialty of community integral medicine. Another example of the humanist character of Cuban medicine, demonstrated since the very first years of the Revolution, is the fact that there are presently more than 12 thousand students from 24 nations studying at Havana's Latin American School of Medicine, which will return to their respective countries over the next few years to join the 5 thousand graduates from that School who are already practicing in their communities of origin. Undoubtedly, Operation Miracle deserves special place in this account of the Cuban public health's efforts and results, a project that provides free eye surgical to poor patients from all over Latin America. This ambitious program, created by Cuba three years ago and boosted by Venezuela for the benefit of peoples in The Americas and the rest of the world, is carried out under the umbrella of the Bolivarian Alternative for The Americas or ALBA. By virtue of this program, almost one million patients from 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations have been operated on without having to pay a single cent; most of these surgeries took place at Cuban hospitals, and others at clinics donated by Cuba to several nations on the continent, thus contributing to the objective of restoring th sight of 6 million people in 10 years. The successful results of Operation Miracle, which also helped tens of thousands of Cubans in 2007, show that the Cuban Public Health system is not only for the benefit of Cubans. It's also the expression of the State's responsibility to guarantee one of its people's most precious rights as well as an example of how much can be achieved by way of South-South cooperation, and how much love and dedication Cuba spreads all over the world. * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================