"Cuba — Island of Paradoxes"

A personal reflection on Castro Cuba's health care priorities.

Future Choices pursues answers to the vexing conundrum:
How has one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, whose GDP is akin to Bolivia or Indonesia, managed to build and maintain a comprehensive health care system which is on a par with Western Europe, Japan and the United States?

The Future Choices video currently being aired on local access TV in Westchester County
focuses on health care for Cuban women.

These observations and video clips were assembled by Future Choices producer, Fran Snedeker, after a 2011 "Reality Tour" in Cuba with Global Exchange.

The statistics relating to the dramatic changes in health care in Cuba since 1959 are impressive by their own right.

A chart portraying trend of Infant Mortality in Castro Cuba is stunning:

International Prestige

An excellent source of information about health care in contemporary Cuba is Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad by Julie M. Feinsilver published by University of California Press.

One of the most visible expressions of Cuba's international prestige in delivery of medical care is the Latin American Medical School or ELAM (Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina). ELAM was established in 1999 to train generalist physicians from impoverished and underserved areas of the world, primarily from Africa and the Americas. The essential characteristic of the medical training received at ELAM is certification in primary care.
Supported through six years of medical school by full scholarship plus a minor stipend, these young doctors return after completion of their studies and field training in Cuba to their native country.
Possibly the largest medical school in the world, in August 2005 some 10,000 students from 27 countries were enrolled in ELAM including a number of Americans. How US students ended up in Cuba is the subject of a fascinating short article by Fitzhugh Mullan in the December 2004 New England Journal of Medicine (“Affirmative Action, Cuban Style”).

When is Future Choices aired in your community?
See Local TV schedule for time and channel in each participating community in Westchester County.