The Sickening

A Cuban medical office with a sign reading “No prescriptions available.” Photo by: Dr. Darsi Ferrer [via The Real Cuba].

News of Fidel Castro’s retirement has elicited some interesting responses. Chris Bertram’s has to be one of the most arrogant and least informed:

So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!

Bertram is being purposefully provocative with his post, which is what makes it so arrogant, but he’s doing so based on leftist myths, which is why it so misinformed.

The wonderful Cuban health care and education systems are shibboleths of Castro apologists everywhere. For example, film provocateur Michael Moore used the health care myth to agitate for socialized medicine in his propaganda piece entitled Sicko. However, as is the case with propaganda, reality begs to differ:

One of the greatest fallacies about the so called ‘Cuban Revolution’ has to do with healthcare.

Foreigners who visit Cuba, are fed the official line from Castro’s propaganda machine: “All Cubans are now able to receive excellent healthcare, which is also free.” But the truth is very different. Castro has built excellent health facilities for the use of foreigners, who pay with hard currency for those services.

Argentinean soccer star Maradona, for example, has traveled several times to Cuba to receive treatment to combat his drug addiction. But Cubans are not even allowed to visit those facilities. Cubans who require medical attention must go to other hospitals, that lack the most minimum requirements needed to take care of their patients.

In addition, most of these facilities are filthy and patients have to bring their own towels, bed sheets, pillows, or they would have to lay down on dirty bare mattresses stained with blood and other body fluids.

The facilities available to most Cubans are nothing like the ones featured in Sicko, and the “free health care” is not really worth much. [See what real Cuban health care looks like after the jump]

A patient’s bed at the Hogar Provincial de Ancianos Marina Azcuy, in Pinar del RioPhoto by: Adela Soto and Luis Alberto Pacheco Mendoza.

A patient at the same facility covered in flies. Photo by: Luis Alberto Pacheco Mendoza and Adela Soto

Dead roaches on the floor of Hospital Clínico Quirúrgico Joaquin Albarran in Havana. Photo by: María Elena Morejón

Orthopedic tools at the same Havana facility. Photo by: María Elena Morejón

As for the actual care received at the fine facilities above, the case of Yamilet Fernandez Donate is revealing:

Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramírez, Director of the Juan Bruno Zayas Health and Human Rights Center in Havana, sent these photos of Yamilet Fernandez Donate, a 32 year old Cuban woman who almost died after complaining last November 27 of abdominal pain and entering one of Havana’s hospitals for Cubans. At the time, Mrs. Fernandez was six weeks pregnant and wasn’t suffering from any diagnosed illness. She entered the Hospital Nacional in Havana where she was given intravenous analgesics and was sent home when the pain subsided.

A few hours later, Yamilet’s abdominal pain got much worse and she was also running a fever. She went to the Hijas de Galicia Maternity Hospital. There she was told that her pain was not related to her pregnancy and that she should see the surgeon on duty at the Miguel Enriques Hospital. In there, she was told that she was suffering from Acute Gastritis and the doctors recommended a gastric suction (stomach pumping or gastric lavage) and after the procedure she was told to go home that everything was now OK.

When Yamilet got much worse, her family took her to the Julio Trigo Hospital. Once there, the doctors told her that what she really had was an Urinary Infection and said that the best thing was to send her back to the Hospital Nacional. In the next couple of days Yamilet’s health got much worse. She was in constant pain and running a high fever. She was vomiting, had muscular fatigue and even fainted several times. After the family kept complaining, the doctors decided to operate the poor woman and they finally determined that she had a perforated appendix, peritonitis and an intestinal occlusion.

After the operation she spent several days in the intensive care unit and later had to have another surgery due to several complications that resulted from the first one. Several days later the doctors told her that they had to perform an abortion. At the end, and because of the negligence of her doctors, Yamilet lost her baby and also portions of her intestine and colon. She also has very ugly scars on her abdomen to remind her of the pain and suffering that she had to endure at the hands of these butchers dressed as doctors. Castro has sent thousands of Cuban doctors to Venezuela and many other countries of South America and Africa. And now Cubans who get sick have to endure not only the lack of medicines, but also the lack of qualified medical practitioners. Of course, those ‘doctors’ don’t have to worry about a malpractice lawsuit since they work for the Cuban regime and the victims don’t have any right to complain about their “free healthcare.” Next time that you hear one of Castro’s apologists saying that Cubans receive “excellent free healthcare” show them Yamilet’s photos and the story of what she went through.

Dr. Ramírez also smuggled some video footage out of Cuba that sharply contrasts with “wonderful free health care” meme:

Although the media coverage of Cuba’s decrepit health care system is quite scarce, there are enough stories, pictures and video out there challenging the beliefs of the Castro apologists to leave one with little doubt that they are just whistling past the graveyard. They can’t all be that misinformed can they? Well, considering the above, Bertram is either misinformed or entirely dishonest.

Then how about that education system? It’s not much better than the free health care, and about as accessible to regular Cubans. In fact, the education really isn’t “free” in Cuba at all:

On April 4, 1961 the Cuban dictator created the “Unión de Pioneros de Cuba” (Union of Pioneers of Cuba).

Almost all Cuban children, including Elian Gonzalez … have to become ‘pioneros.’

If you don’t want your child to be a pionero his chances of getting an education in Castro’s Cuba are almost non existent Pioneros have to participate in many extra-curricular activities, like marching in front of the US Interests Section whenever the dictator wants, or any other activities being promoted by the Castro regime.

Pioneros are also asked to denounce any counterrevolutionary activity that they see at home, or at the homes of their friends, to their teachers. Many Cuban parents went to jail because one of their children notified authorities that their parents were talking about the government or doing anything at home that was considered ‘illegal.’

When the pioneros participate in a government march or any other government sponsored activity, they are given a coupon like the one above. These coupons must be given to their teachers the following day proving that you participated. If you don’t turn in your coupon and don’t have a very good excuse, the teacher will make a notation on the “Expediente Acumulativo del Estudiante” (Student Accumulative Dossier) that each Cuban student carries from kindergarten until he graduates from high school.

Sounds a little like the Hitler Youth, no?Aside from becoming an agent of the state, Cuban school children must fill their Student Accumulative Dossiers with the right activities (e.g. attending marches, contributing to the Militia of Territorial Troops), and their parents must be properly “integrated” in order to have a chance at higher education.

Photo by: George Utset of The Real Cuba

In addition to information about the student participation in all political activities, the dossier also has information about his family including whether his parents are ‘integrated’ or not, as can be seen above.

This page reads “Integración Revolucionaria” or Revolutionary Integration. The first line refers to the father and the second line to the mother of the student. It shows if they belong to the Communist Party; to the Union of Cuban Women; to the CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution); the Federation of Cuban Women; and the CTC or Confederation of Cuban Workers. In pre-Castro Cuba, the CTC used to represent Cuban workers and demand new benefits and better salaries for them. In Castro’s Cuba the CTC, as everything else, is part of the regime that is exploiting the workers and treating them as if they were slaves.

The poor Cuban workers have to pay a fee to the CTC from their meager salaries in order to be “represented” by them.

Can someone please remind me again how Cuba’s wonderful health care and education systems justify the horrible repression of the nation’s citizens?

[Credit: This entire post relied heavily on the work of George Utset who put together The Real Cuba, and who has gathered the photos and lots of other information presented above at his site.]