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British experts praise Cuba's public health system

HAVANA: British medical experts on Friday praised Cuba's public health system, saying its emphasis on preventive medicine and community involvement contained useful lessons for Britain's controversial national health service.

"It's the prevention side and the community involvement which are the strengths of the Cuban system," Sir Brian Jarman, Professor of Primary Health Care at Imperial College, London's School of Medicine, told Reuters in Havana.

He spoke at the end of a five-day visit to communist-ruled Cuba by a 150-strong delegation of British doctors and health experts, who also included Sir Denis Pereira Gray, President of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Jarman and Pereira Gray praised the way Cuban health authorities had developed an extensive network of family health clinics and posts across the Caribbean island, at low cost and despite considerable economic and material shortages.

They said the Cuban health system, which provides free cradle-to-grave cover for all Cubans, was a useful example to study and compare at a time when the British government was looking at ways of reforming its own public health service.

Britain's National Health Service has often been criticised as inefficient and as a heavy financial burden to the state.

Pereira Gray said he saw the Cuban system as "highly efficient" in economic terms. "They are keeping people happy at much lower expense," he added.

He went on: "We must be very careful before we dilute and downgrade the family doctor system in Britain".

The British delegation, which was led by Professor Patrick Pietroni, Dean of Postgraduate General Practice at London University, signed a memorandum with Cuba's Health Ministry pledging to increase exchanges of information and visits.

With free services for all, one of the highest ratios of doctors in the world, and First World-level medical statistics, Cuba's health system is widely regarded as one of the main achievements of Fidel Castro's 1959 Revolution.

According to government figures, infant mortality fell to 6.5 deaths per thousand births last year. Childhood diseases have been eradicated by vaccination and there are about 60 doctors for every 10,000 inhabitants among the island's 11 million.

Nevertheless, many Cubans grumble about shortages of medicine and equipment, which the government blames on the recent economic crisis and the continuing 38-year-old U.S. economic embargo against the country.-Reuters