Conflicting reports about Medical Care in Cuba?

[RadioRaheem84]

OK, I was directed to an obvious 'gusano' website about Cuba's medical system that showed some questionable yet horrid photos about the Cuban health care system. It showed dirty, dingy hospitals full of feces, dilapidated infrastructure and old medical equipment.

http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm

They said Havana Hospital is a for profit hospital for medical tourists and usually only available to non-Cuban tourists. Is this true?

I would also like some links that say otherwise, please. Thanks

[#FF0000]

I generally don't buy that stuff at all. I remember awhile back, TheRealCuba had some pictures of "cuban shantytowns" or something like that, and it turned out the pictures were from some other Latin American country. They're a dishonest bunch.

[RadioRaheem84]

I generally don't buy that stuff at all. I remember awhile back, TheRealCuba had some pictures of "cuban shantytowns" or something like that, and it turned out the pictures were from some other Latin American country. They're a dishonest bunch.

I figured that these pics might be of some other country too. I mean if you contrast them with the pics of Cuban Hospitals on other sites, they seem like two different countries. The Cuban governments invests a lot in health care to boast about it to the rest of the world. Why would they impoverish them knowing that that's one of their key selling points?

[x371322]

I smell some right wing propaganda... Doesn't anyone have a friend of a friend who lives in Cuba that could comment on this?

[Robocommie]

Don't trust them. That website has "unverified, partisan bullshit lies" plastered all over it. The fact that it is from gusanos makes it doubly questionable. A lot of those people are reactionary, bourgeois scumbags. I doubt they were so concerned about the poverty and the miserable conditions of the poor in Cuba back when Batista was in charge.

And well, let's not hesitate to mention that if they did actually give a damn about the quality of life for the common Cuban, they'd stop lobbying so incessantly for the continuation of a Cold War-era embargo that makes it so hard for Cuba to find buyers for their exports and a source for hard to find imports, like certain medicines only produced by US companies.

But listen, weigh your sources, don't just take the word of socialists as gospel. Just try to find independent, verifiable sources for this. Just as a quick throwaway example, that bastion of socialist apologia, the Central Intelligence Agency world factbook, lists the Cuban life expectancy at 77.45 years, ranked #55th in the world, a bit below the US at #49th, with 78.11 years. These are the CIA's own numbers.

[RadioRaheem84]

Anyone have any good websites to start? Cuban Solidarity is one that I found.

[RadioRaheem84]

I think that after examining a lot of the photos the gusanos paste of the anti-revolution websites, it seems that they're counting on a lot of factors for people to be turned off to Cuba.

A.) That because there aren't Mercedes and Mustangs in the streets and the people aren't decked out in Gucci that there must be this horrendous poverty akin to sub-Saharan Africa.

B.) The pics they take are of people causally sitting in the streets, but they paint the picture that the people are in the streets because they're homeless and dying of hunger.

C.) The fact that a lot of the buildings are in serious need of renovation makes people think that Cuba is a totalitarian hell hole State where the leaders keep their people in a backward state.

[Robocommie]

Just remember to always keep in mind, what Cuba these people get all misty over:



The Cuba that Castro found in 1959, when he seized power at the head of a populist revolution was not a Haiti, or even a Guatemala. In fact, Cuba was among the least underdeveloped countries in Latin America. It ranked third in life expectancy at birth, fourth in electricity consumption per capita, and fifth in annual income per capita ($353 in 1958).

However, these crude statistics masked shocking inequalities, particularly between the city and the countryside, and between white Cubans, and black and mulatto Cubans.

There was not just one Cuba, but two, perhaps even three Cubas, as far apart one from the other as the Havana of all-white country clubs and glittering casinos was from the city's slums, and these, in turn, from the often desperate countryside.

While Cuban cities had a lively media, as well as more cars and TV sets per capita than practically any other Latin American country, courtesy of the American-style consumerism of the wealthy and the urban middle-class, hunger was a fact of life in rural areas, where some 1.5 million people (25% of the population) struggled to survive.

Big sugar companies kept hundreds of thousands of acres uncultivated, while landless peasants were forced to plant on the sides of roads, until the brutal, machete-wielding rural police, the Guardia Rural, would drive them out.

Peasants joined Castro's rebel army in droves because they had nothing to lose:
• 75% of rural dwellings were huts made from palm trees.
• More than 50% had no toilets of any kind.
• 85% had no inside running water.
• 91% had no electricity.
• There was only 1 doctor per 2,000 people in rural areas.
• More than one-third of the rural population had intestinal parasites.
• Only 4% of Cuban peasants ate meat regularly; only 1% ate fish, less than 2% eggs, 3% bread, 11% milk; none ate green vegetables.
• The average annual income among peasants was $91 (1956), less than 1/3 of the national income per person.
• 45% of the rural population was illiterate; 44% had never attended a school.

Even for most city dwellers, life was not all that rosy.
• 25% of the labor force was chronically unemployed.
• 1 million people were illiterate ( in a population of about 5.5 million).
• 27% of urban children, not to speak of 61% of rural children, were not attending school.
• Racial discrimination was widespread.
• The public school system had deteriorated badly.
• Corruption was endemic; anyone could be bought, from a Supreme Court judge to a cop.
• Police brutality and torture were common.
http://www.thegully.com/essays/cuba/000305cubastats59.html