297th
Meeting –
Tuesday, January 15th 2008
Swimming
Against the Tide: The Cuban Health System
A 47-minute documentary film produced &
directed by
Tom Fawthrop
Tom
Fawthrop
has worked on
several assignments in Cuba
and visited this Caribbean
Island on 6
occasions
since 1995.
Tom introduced the
film and
discussed and answered questions:
How is it possible
that a poor
nation like Cuba
can achieve health indicators - low infant mortality and longevity - on
a par
with the world's richer nations? Over 200 Cubans are centenarians and
on
average live until they are around 76, a higher life expectancy than
most
countries in Asia.
In several fields of
medical
research - new vaccines, new therapies, and ground-breaking anti-cancer
agents
- this small Caribbean nation is
challenging
the pharmaceutical empires of the West.
Not widely known, Cuba is already exporting their
intellectual
property and medical patents to China,
India and Malaysia
including a new generation of anti-cancer therapies.
How is it possible
that
cash-strapped Cuba
and one of the financially poorer nations, has achieved so
much with
so few resources? And that one of the world's poorer nations can offer
to help
the US
- the world's richest - to cope with Hurricane Katrina? Cuba offered to send hundreds of
doctors to New Orleans
in 2005.
Currently around 30,000 health personnel -doctors, nurses etc are
serving in
humanitarian missions abroad covering 68 countries, this includes
long-term
medical aid programs in Haiti,
Mali, Gambia, Guinea,
East Timor, South Africa and the Solomon
Islands,
and emergency aid given to victims of natural disasters –Tsunami
and
earthquakes in Pakistan
and Indonesia.
From
Havana to Haiti,
from Pakistan to
the Pacific
Islands lives
have been saved and
public health systems strengthened by the intervention of Cuban medical
teams.
At a time when public
health
systems are in crisis and a tide of privatisation of healthcare has
gripped the
globe, this documentary looks in depth at one health system that is
swimming
against the currents of corporate globalization. This documentary
traces the
development of the new health system from its beginnings after the 1959
Cuban
revolution to the present-day. Cuban doctors from all fields - primary
health
care and family doctors, medical researchers and the island's highly
developed
capacity for the production of some of the world's best vaccines,
neurologists
and eye-surgeons all tell their story.
But their work
around the
world is much less-known than MSF Doctors without Borders. One of the
batches
of students from the USA
studying in Cuba
tells us in the film “They have Cuban doctors in so many
countries but you
never hear about it.” This unreported world is the subject of
this film.
For
more information contact and DVDs EurekaCuba@gmail.com