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MARIO J. TORRES
Public Health and Education
(1) PUBLIC HEALTH
Medicine:
In Cuba there is a total scarcity of medications. Even aspirins cannot be
found anywhere, so the government has established a strict control over
prescriptions. First of all, everything is under prescription, and the
number of tablets of a given medication a patient can get is very limited.
Pharmacies are usually empty, and there are even some medications that are
controlled by the food coupon notebook. Many people who work in pharmacy
stock houses steal medications from the place and sell them to others who in
turn will sell them again at very high prices to those in need. Many people
cure themselves with herbs as in the past, and the government advertises
herbal medicine a lot, and potions of syrups with herbal medications
replacing normal medications are on sale.
Doctors usually diagnose diseases, but they are unable to prescribe
anything, so what they usually do is tell the patient the name of the
medication and the dose and advise him to try to get it on his own because
it is not available in pharmacies.
Hospital emergency rooms lack the following:
(a) X-ray films
(b) Bandages
(c) Needles
(d) Scissors
(e) Sterile material
(f) Analgesics
(g) Shots for asthma
and the only medications available are kept for hospital admissions. The
food in hospitals is bad, and nurses and doctors who are also affected by
the situation are usually not polite or careful, and the patient is left
most of the time to his own fate, come what may.
In Cuba, seeing a doctor is literally just seeing a doctor and nothing else.
Another relevant aspect is that doctors do not give importance to patients.
They just get rid of work, and attention is poor.
If a Cuban gets sick, he is relying one hundred percent on God's will.
Dentistry:
This service is probably worse than medicine. Most of the time, dental
offices have no:
(a) Water
(b) Electricity
(c) Sterile equipment
(d) Anesthetics
(e) Assistants
(f) Working equipment
(g) Working materials
Due to all this, any patient has to be really lucky to get a filling done or
an extraction made. Dentists usually ask patients to get what they can and
bring anesthetics of their own for their extractions. Much emphasis is made
of acupuncture for extraction due to the lack of anesthetics.
Dentists are very careless with patients. They are not explicative, kind, or
delicate with their patients and they usually get upset when being asked too
many questions.
It can be said that Public Health in Cuba is chaos and people survive
because their time to die has not yet arrived.
The Cuban government made an agreement with South Africa to send Cuban
doctors to work there for two years in a better "neo-internationalist" trend
with two requirements:
(a) To be good at Medicine
(b) To be fluent in English.
Doctors would be paid in dollars with a good share for the government, so
for most doctors it meant economic improvement and, for others, survival.
Doctors in Cuba have to bike to their work like most professionals. They do
not have clothes, food, or money and if they have a car, they do not have
gas to use it.
Due to all these reasons, lots of doctors volunteered to learn English, pass
the test, and go abroad. The ones who could pass it and could travel are now
living much better than the ones who stayed. Some of these doctors stayed in
countries where the plane landed for maintenance.
Castro boasts that Public Health is free, and it really should be free
because it practically does not exist.
(2) EDUCATION
In Cuba there is a great scarcity of notebooks, textbooks, pencils, chalk,
or paper. The policy is to save and do much with little, so education
resources are very limited.
The instructive demand level of education is acceptable, but all subjects
must include political issues to defend the system, praise its
"advantages,"describe its "benefits and and achievements" to brainwash
school kids; thus spoiling everything.
Every teacher must "politize" his classes; otherwise, the class evaluation
would be low.
Political organizations start working with kids as soon as they get into
school. They organize parades, productive works, night guard duties in the
street, overnight camping, military activities, emulation rallies,
productive work in gardens or fields and they evaluate kids' behavior
exactly the same as they do with adults' behavior.
In Cuba, when something good happens, people are taught to say: "Thanks to
the Revolution, to Socialism, or to the Commander in Chief"; on the other
hand, when something goes wrong in the country, the Yankee Imperialism is to
blame. This is one of the slogans kids have to repeat like parrots.
Textbooks and literature must reflect political and ideological issues; and
frequent remarks to Lenin, Castro, Marx or Ernesto Guevara are made in any
subject. Also the first references to be consulted no matter if the subject
is Chemistry or Biology are books on politics or documents from the
Communist party.
The following is a normal elementary math problem in any country:
--If I have five dollars, and my father gives me ten more, how many will I
have?
But in Cuba, it may kind of vary like this:
-- For the Socialist emulation, the Communist Party members of Group A cut
twenty tons of sugar cane for the people's harvest, whereas the Young
Communist staff from Group B cut thirty. How many tons did all comrades cut
in total? Who won the Socialist Emulation?
Middle and high schools must go two months to the countryside every year
either to cut cane or pick coffee in the mountains for their political
formation. Students who do not attend these activities lose credits and
cannot take any specific career or scholarship if they are evaluated as
negative. There are also permanent schools in the countryside where students
must work in a session and study in the other.
Teachers are also evaluated yearly, with the same demands according to their
political and ideological behavior.
MARIO J TORRES
JANUARY 2004
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