Bill Frist, the former U.S. Senate majority leader, has a blog piece on the Forbes web site praising the Cuban health care system, writing that
On two health-oriented trips to Cuba in the past year, what struck me was a systematically planned and organized primary care delivery system that captured the doctor-patient relationships of my father’s era of medical practice. Cuba treats healthcare as a human right, specifically stipulated in its constitution. Cuban nationals receive care for free, and have a neighborhood primary care physician who often knows them by name and sees them regularly.
Okay. That is what is supposed to happen. Here’s some more recent health news directly from Cuba:
14ymedio, the independent digital newspaper, reports on an outbreak of cholera in eastern Cuba http://www.14ymedio.com/englishedition/New-Outbreaks-Cholera-Santiago-Cuba_0_1793820604.html.
Translating Cuba, the English-language site for independent bloggers, reports on the reappearance of the dengue fever mosquito, saying around 30,000 people in the eastern city of Holguin have been exposed to the disease http://translatingcuba.com/holguin-besieged-by-dengue-fever-mosquito-14ymedio-fernando-donate-ochoa/
Dr. Eloy Gonzalez, a Cuban physician residing in the United States, writes El Blog de Medicina Cubana http://medicinacubana.blogspot.co.uk/, an invaluable source of information about health care in his native country. His most recent post contains disease statistics across the country compiled by the Pedro Kouri Tropical Disease Institute in Havana, revealing an increase in reported cases of syphilis, bacterial and viral meningitis, along with acute respiratory infections.
Notes on the Americas 