Cuba's Real Health Care System

Check out this excellent article at BigJournalism.com by Humberto Fontova regarding Cuba's health care system.

From the piece:

"So on the August 6 edition of CNN’s 'Newsroom,' while Morgan Neil 'reported' on location from a Potemkin Havana hospital, gushing about Cuban healthcare’s 'impressive statistics!' the broadcast included clips from Michael Moore’s Sicko, adding much oomph to the propaganda montage. CNN’s 'Cuba’s infant mortality rates' reported Neil, 'are the lowest in the hemisphere, in line with those of Canada!'

"'Amazing!' probably gasped the type of person who watches CNN nowadays 'No wonder Colin Powell said “Castro had done some good things for his people!' No wonder Barbara Walters hailed Castro for 'bringing great healthcare to his people!' No wonder Michael Moore catches so much grief from those insufferable Miami Cubans! Before Castro only they could afford doctors, as Cuba’s huddled masses languished in sickness and poverty!

"And indeed, according to UN figures, Cuba’s current infant mortality rate places her 44th from the top in worldwide ranking, right next to Canada. (The lower the rate the higher the ranking.) What CNN left out is that according to those same UN figures, in 1958 (the year prior to the glorious revolution), Cuba ranked 13th from the top, worldwide.

"This meant that robustly capitalist Cuba had the 13th lowest infant-mortality rate in the world. This put her not only at the top in Latin America but atop most of Western Europe, ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Today all of these countries leave Communist Cuba in the dust, with much lower infant mortality rates.

"And even plummeting from 13th (capitalist) to 44th (communist), Cuba’s 'impressive' infant mortality rate is kept artificially low by Communist chicanery with statistics and by a truly appalling abortion rate of 0.71 abortions per live birth. This is the hemisphere’s highest, by far. Any Cuban pregnancy that even hints at trouble gets 'terminated.'"

[...]

"The Castroite propaganda in Sicko so outraged people cursed by fate to live in Castro’s fiefdom that they risked their lives by using hidden cameras to film conditions in genuine Cuban hospitals, hoping they could alert the world to Moore’s swinishness as a propaganda operative for a Stalinist regime.

"At enormous risk, two hours of shocking, often revolting, footage was obtained with tiny hidden cameras and smuggled out of Cuba to Cuban-exile George Utset, who runs the superb and revelatory website The Real Cuba. The man who assumed most of the risk during the filming and smuggling was Cuban dissident — a medical doctor himself — Dr Darsi Ferrer, who was also willing to talk on camera, narrating much of the video’s revelations. Dr Ferrer worked in these genuinely Cuban hospitals daily, witnessing the truth. More importantly, he wasn’t cowed from revealing this truth to America and the world. (A recent samizdat reports that the black Dr Ferrer is currently languishing in a Cuban prison cell –not far from Gitmo, btw– undergoing frequent beatings."

Read the article in its entirety, especially ABC's caving in under Havana pressure. It is enlightening.

Michael Moore didn't tell you about any of this. Is anyone surprised?



On a personal note, I should be back to regularly posting on my blog next week.

Thanks.