Cuba uses wealth of doctors in trade

Cuba uses wealth of doctors in trade
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. | The New York Times
November 22, 2007

HAVANA - A shiny new tour bus pulled up to the top eye hospital in Cuba
on a sunny day this month and disgorged 47 working-class people from El
Salvador, many of whom could barely see because they had thick cataracts
in their eyes.

Among them were Francisca Antonia Guevara, 74, a housewife from Ciudad
Delgado whose world was a blur. She said she had visited an eye doctor
in her home country but could not pay the $200 needed for artificial
lens implants, much less pay for the surgery.

"As someone of few resources, I couldn't afford it," she said. "With the
bad economic situation we have there, how are we going to afford this?"

Cuba's economy is not exactly booming either, yet within two hours
Guevara's cataracts were excised and the lenses implanted, with the
Cuban government paying for everything — including air transportation,
housing, food and even follow-up care.

The government has dubbed the program Operation Miracle, and for the
hundreds of thousands of people from Venezuela, Central America and the
Caribbean who have benefited from it since it was started in July 2004,
it is aptly named.

Yet the program is no simple humanitarian effort, and it has not come
without a cost. The campaign serves as a poignant advertisement for the
benefits of Cuban socialism, as well as an ingenious way to export one
of the few things the Cuban state-run economy produces in abundance —
doctors.

In recent years, the program has allowed Cuba to use its doctors as
barter for subsidized Venezuelan oil and to forge closer relations with
other countries in the region, including those, like El Salvador, that
have not been historically close to the communist regime.

Cuban doctors abroad receive much better pay than in Cuba, along with
other benefits from the state, like the right to buy a car and get a
relatively luxurious house when they return. As a result, many of the
finest physicians have taken posts abroad.

The doctors and nurses left in Cuba are stretched thin and overworked,
resulting in a decline in the quality of care for Cubans, some doctors
and patients said.

The Cuban authorities say they have treated more than 750,000 people for
eye conditions like cataracts and glaucoma since the program started.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-flhcubamedical1122sbnov22,0,3327682.story