• Submitted by: admin
• Health and Medicine
• 06 / 29 / 2010

Before the news gets too old it's worth New Zealand taking notice of a recent development in Australia where the country is taking steps to work alongside Cuba in providing medical aid for developing countries around the Pacific.

Three weeks ago Australia hosted Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, and Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith warmly spoke of Cuba's medical aid programme, which assists developing countries throughout the world.

In East Timor, for example, Cuba is training hundreds of locals to become doctors.

In fact, throughout the world 25,000 Cuban-trained doctors are working in 68 developing countries while Cuba trains the locals to eventually take over.

It's a development contribution from one of the poorest countries on earth which puts to shame the overseas aid efforts of most developed countries such as New Zealand.

Australia recognises this and its foreign minister sees great potential for Australia and Cuba to join forces and help small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean to boost their medical services.

He said "given Cuba's world-class credentials in the medical training area, given our world-class expertise in child and maternal health care, we believe there is potential for us to work together".

Smith went on to say Australia was looking at assisting Cuba build a medical facility in quake-hit Haiti.

New Zealand should be looking at similar cooperation with Cuba and we shouldn't let US paranoia get in the way.

Cuba has developed a world-class medical system despite being a poor country and despite the intense pressure from the US, which is desperate to stop Cuba from becoming a positive role model for social development.

America's political elites don't want the tens of millions of their own underprivileged population asking why the wealthiest country in the world can't provide the same medical services to everyone as can their poor neighbour.

It's a corporate nightmare so a 52-year campaign of misinformation and denigration has been run by the US run to demonise Cuba and its achievements. The anti-Cuba lobby in the US is probably the second biggest lobby after the pro-Israeli lobby.

But despite their best efforts just the US, Israel and Palau voted to maintain the embargo on Cuba in a UN vote last year while 189 countries voted for the blockade to be lifted - New Zealand included.

We should expect New Zealand to take a similar attitude to Cuba as Australia and work with a country which has far more limited resources than New Zealand and yet manages such high standards of health care at much lower cost.

The benefits to Pacific countries are obvious and the bonus for New Zealand would be in learning from Cuba how to defeat Third World diseases, particularly in children, which are now endemic in this country.

With our healthcare system struggling and services increasingly being rationed for the most vulnerable New Zealanders, we can learn a lot from the Cuban experience.

As Australian doctor Jeannie Ellis told prime minister Kevin Rudd earlier this year, "Maybe Australia should take a leaf out of the Cuban healthcare system's book where they have something like $20,000 less per capita and they have exactly the same healthcare indicators as Australia.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz/business/blogs/frontline/