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By Michael Fechter of The Tampa Tribune
11/29/98
HAVANA - Cuba's president now seeks help from other nations to improve
Central America's flagging health care system and reduce the region's high
infant mortality rate.
With its support of armed revolutions a thing of the past, Cuba now wants to
be known as an exporter of doctors rather than fighters.
When Hurricane Mitch ravaged Central America, Cuba quickly sent medical
teams and followed up with offers of more. About 200 Cuban doctors already are
working in countries affected by the storm.
Cuba's decades-old policy of providing humanitarian aid to Third World
countries was long overshadowed by its support for armed struggle, which ended
with the Cold War at the start of this decade.
Now President Fidel Castro is making a broad proposal: He is offering to
help improve Central America's health care with more than 2,000 doctors and
5,000 medical scholarships over 10 years.
The idea is to slash the area's high infant mortality rate, saving tens of
thousands of lives each year - many more than the 10,000 officials say were lost
in the hurricane.
``There is a hurricane worse than Mitch that is causing terrible human
damage,'' Castro said in a weekend speech.
``What Cuba wants to show is that if a country of such limited material and
economic resources can do something ... the industrialized world can do
infinitely more,'' Castro said.
Indeed, other countries would have to help if Castro's plan is to go
forward. He estimated it would require roughly $200 million in goods and
medicine - money that Cuba could not provide.
Castro suggested European or Latin American nations help. He calculated that
if the United States were to dedicate to the plan $1 out of each $1,250 it
spends on defense, ``they could save 50,000 lives.''
While outside support is uncertain at best, the proposal is an example of a
major thread in Cuban foreign policy: using the surplus of doctors created by
its socialist system to win friends abroad.
Cuba has sent doctors to underdeveloped nations and educated foreign doctors
since the early 1960s. It dispatched physicians to help Nicaragua and Peru, then
hostile to Cuba, recover from earthquakes.
But Cuba's military support of rebel movements in Latin America and
pro-Soviet governments in Africa has alienated Cuba from many countries.
With the close of the Cold War, the soldiers have come home, Cuba has cut
support to revolutionaries and increased doctor diplomacy - with positive
effects on Cuba's image.
Castro said Cuba has had as many as 22,000 foreign college students, medical
and otherwise, on scholarships in the past.
``That also helps explain the solidarity of the Third World with Cuba,'' he
said, adding: ``We did not do it for that. We did it because of our ideals and
our feelings of solidarity and of internationalism.''
While many things in Cuba are in short supply, the country is flush with
doctors.
When the current class graduates in August, Castro said Cuba's 11 million
people will be served by 66,000 doctors. That is roughly one for every 170
people, one of the best ratios in the world.
Cuba also has 1,000 doctors working abroad, including more than 400 in South
Africa. Many work in remote areas where health care has been hard to come by and
other doctors are loathe to work - such as the Mosquitia Indian area on
Honduras' Atlantic coast.
Cuba also has room in its medical schools. Castro said the country has space
for 30,000 medical students but has only about 15,000 now studying, including
students from abroad. |