Displaying items by tag: healthcare

In this article you will find useful tips not only to spend less money in your next trip to Cuba, but also to do things more intelligently and, sure, to make many things easier. The final goal of this writing is to help you to make your life in Cuba more handy.

These tips are not suitable for a completely inexperienced traveler. If you will visit Cuba for the first time, this article is probably not for you, even if you can still apply some tips. But in this case, you should better first familiarize yourself with the country and the place, then begin consider to make things better. But let's go to the tips!

It is an insult to human dignity and intelligence to listen to Cuban dictators preach loudly and without hesitation that Cuba is a healthcare power when cases like these take place. 

Anyone with a single shred of dignity would find it very difficult to live in Cuba. It is certainly revolting to hear Cuban leaders speak of the virtues of their healthcare system, and to know they sell this idea with great success.

These immoral rulers take advantage of the media to scrupulously wash their disgusting image that they then sell and export so successfully. I’ve been told many others want to emulate them in their countries, although I find that hard to believe.

Yet I will not talk today about the poor hygiene and lack of food in hospitals. Nor will I discuss the great shortage of medicines, the unreliability of medical equipment, or the discontent of professionals and workers in healthcare (due low wages and terrible working conditions.)

I won’t talk about the deficit of doctors due to the excessive exports of healthcare professionals— whose true purpose is to paint the dictators in a false image of philanthropy abroad.

The tyrant’s mayor export is socialism, and up to now, it’s biggest buyer has been Venezuela. They’ve spent more on Cuba than the Soviet Union did before collapsing under the inefficiency of the same centralized economy that the two Latin American regimes propose.

Central planning leads to absolute control. Every economic activity is in the state’s hands, and not being able to properly manage everything, basic services start to falter. By nature of being under control of the dictator, there is no one to hold accountable or complain to. Whomever tries to help is sanctioned.

Which is why I want to focus instead on the most basic of health services: the ambulance.

The ambulance service is known as the Integrated System of Medical Emergencies of Cuba, or SIUM. It is an insult to human dignity and intelligence to listen to Cuban dictators preach loudly and without hesitation that Cuba is a healthcare power when cases occur like in the video above.

In the “healthcare power” of Cuba, the inhabitants of Nitrogeno, a rural community located in the Camagüey province, do not have access to this basic emergency service.

Recently, a 90-year-old man had to be transferred in terrible health to the hospital in a horse-drawn cart, as the efforts made by relatives and neighbors to obtain SIUM services were unsuccessful.

The old man had to suffer for more than 2 km by impassable roads before arriving at the hospital, and—as if that was not enough to demonstrate the false humanism of the Cuban system— a well-intentioned neighbor, owner of the rustic transport, was given a fine for having used the precarious means of transportation for a purpose not authorized by the Castros.

That’s the way it is. And those that crave that their countries be like Cuba should know. Socialism demands that the means of production be collectively owned, so even a cart must serve the “interests of the revolution.”

Here, no form of solidarity is possible. Because the Government must verify, authorize and allow even the simplest help. In socialism, the annulment of private property extends to all private action.

Nothing is yours, not even your will. So if you dare to help another when the state fails, prepare for the consequences.

There are not enough words!

Until next time.