Is Michael Moore Right About Cuba?

Is Michael Moore Right About Cuba?

New Documentary SALUD! Provides Insights on Cuban Health Care System

ATLANTA, June 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For Americans curious about Cuba's health care system after seeing Michael Moore's SiCKO, the new documentary film SALUD! sheds light on how such a resource-poor country can provide its people with universal health care.

SALUD! is directed by Academy Award nominee Connie Field and was produced with support from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Rockefeller Foundation. SALUD! is the first film to examine the results of Cuba's health care system and the island's global cooperation program, which sends 30,000 health professionals abroad. The documentary was filmed in Cuba, South Africa, The Gambia, Honduras and Venezuela, and includes testimonials from former President Jimmy Carter, Harvard University's Dr. Paul Farmer, and George Washington University's Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan.

"The biggest lesson we learned filming SALUD! is that no matter how poor a society or a community is, accessible, affordable health care is possible," said producer Gail Reed, international director of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC), the Atlanta-based organization that works to enhance global health cooperation. "Cuba's experience in delivering health and training physicians to provide good primary care is an example that we in the United States could learn a lot from."

"The Cuban system of health care and medical education have a great deal to teach us about how to provide medical care -- we can't adopt it wholesale here by any means but it provides lessons we can learn from," said Dr. Mullan.

In an interview in SALUD!, former President Jimmy Carter says, "Of all the so-called developing nations, Cuba has by far the best health system. And their outreach program to other countries is unequaled anywhere."

Cuba provides free universal health care to all of its citizens, with a community-based focus on prevention based on a network of neighborhood clinics. In a December 2006 Gallup Poll, 96% of Cubans said they have regular access to health care, no matter what their income level. Despite its limited economic resources, Cuba's infant mortality rate, life expectancy and other health indicators are comparable to those in the United States, yet the per-person expenditure is only about $230 (compared to over $6,000 in the U.S.).

Cuba has also been a world leader in the development of new vaccines, including one for meningitis, which are not available to patients in the United States because of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

Despite shortages and hospitals in need of refurbishing, the strength of Cuba's health care system lies in its workforce. The country has more than 70,000 doctors, 20,000 of them serving in poor communities abroad (mostly elsewhere in Latin America and in Africa). The 50,000 working at home still give Cuba the best patient-doctor ratio in Latin America, nearly twice that of the U.S. Cuba's Latin American Medical School provides full scholarships to over 10,000 low-income students from around the world (including the U.S.) who make a commitment to work in under-served communities in their own countries when they graduate.

For more information, please visit the SALUD! and MEDICC websites:

http://www.saludthefilm.net/http://www.medicc.org/

Source: Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba

CONTACT: Janet Firshein of Burness Communications, +1-301-652-1558,
jfirshein@burnesscommunications.com, for Medical Education Cooperation with
Cuba

Web site:

http://www.saludthefilm.net/
http://www.medicc.org/

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