MEDICC’s great work featured on MSNBC during papal visit
Just this week, because of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Cuba, MSNBC brought their cameras and crews to Havana. During one of the tapings they interviewed MEDICC’s international director Gail Reed who spoke of Cuba’s health system and its famed Latin American Medical School (ELAM).
Take a look at the video:
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Thanks to friends at MEDICC, I also include a transcript of Reed’s conversation with Mitchell.
Bringing US, Cuban medical communities together
Gail Reed of Medical Education Cooperation [with Cuba] explains Cuba’s universal health care system, how it works and what gaps are being filled. Reed also explains why many American students are traveling to Cuba to study medicine.
Mitchell: And joining me now is Gail Reed international director of a nonprofit… Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba, working to bridge Cuban and American medical treatments. Thanks so much, Gail. Great to have you here.
Reed: Thank you.
Mitchell: We’re seeing this debate in our country about universal health care, the mandate, and the Supreme Court arguments today. We have universal coverage here [in Cuba]. Of course it’s a very different society and an economic model that would not work in the United States. What do you see as the advantages of the Cuban system, the low infant mortality rate for instance, which is legendary around the world but also the gaps you’re trying to fill?
Reed: I was struck by what one of the medical students said about having so little and building up to more, because obviously what they’ve done: health care here wasn’t built in a day. It was built over the last 50 years. It was built with a public policy of emphasizing health care for all. So today you really do have universal health care, free. It is also a system that emphasizes very much prevention built on primary care clinics, doctors and nurses, sort of dotting the country. And they have worked very hard in that area, which I think has economic implications: when you’re trying to do health on a shoestring, prevention is very important. You avoid those big ticket items at least in the first round.
And the other thing is, it’s back to basics. It really is. The doctor and nurse are in the community. They make house calls. There’s no middle man.
Mitchell: House calls?
Reed: I remember in the 50s when I was a kid, we used to get house calls from our pediatricians. They still make house calls in Cuba. And so it’s something that is built over time and has given them outcomes very comparable to those in the States and in Canada, as you mentioned, low infant mortality. Women in Cuba are living to over 80 years old now, a bit more than men at 76. And prevention is the name of the game in terms of the vaccines, in terms of health education, and of course it’s not without its problems.
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Mitchell: It’s not without its problems. There are other problems here. We shouldn’t underemphasize the infrastructure problems, the impact of the embargo. What are you trying to do in bringing in doctors who train here, do they teach? Do you also deal with vaccines and other supplies? Although Cuba has a very – Fidel Castro once showed me the laboratories when they were briefly controversial. There was an erroneous claim that they were biomedical weaponry. And he showed they were basically making antibiotics.
Reed: You got into the inner sanctum to see what was going on.
Mitchell: It was quite amazing but there are shortages.
Reed: Yes there are shortages and I would say there are a few different kinds of problems. One kind of problem is very similar to what we face in the States, which are chronic diseases. The kind of diseases- heart disease, hypertension, cancer, the obesity that causes it. And then there’s infrastructure problems that come from years of economic problems in the ’90s, some of the hospitals need repair. The salaries are not what they should be. And of course, you know, I would say you do have to take your own bed sheets in some of the hospitals even though you can get a heart transplant for free. So they weigh these things. And right now, the emphasis is trying to make this health system more sustainable.
Mitchell: And work the way it has been envisioned. Gail Reed, thank you so much for your wisdom today. Great insight.
