Exporting medicine and influence (cuba)

[azskeptic]

Cuba | Dr Diplomat | Economist.com

[rokshana]

Originally Posted by azskeptic

Cuba | Dr Diplomat | Economist.com

are you just trying to start something?

why not just unlock this thread- its the same topic and you closed it.

http://www.valuemd.com/main-foreign-...ool-story.html

[azskeptic]

Originally Posted by rokshana

are you just trying to start something?

why not just unlock this thread- its the same topic and you closed it.

http://www.valuemd.com/main-foreign-...ool-story.html

I've never closed a thread before...sorry, wrong moderator

[hdu]

"Over the hump? Cubans hope for end of "camel" buses"

..." For shoreter journeys, Cuban commuters fed up with long delays are looking forward for new city buses to replace the "camel". "I'm a plastic surgeon and here I am hitching a ride", said Juan Antonio, who earns $30 a month and cannot afford a car, a private purchase that requires high level goverment approval. "This will improve one day"

My comments:
1.- Of course, imposing those sacrifices to the population (if it happens with a plastic surgeon, imagine the situation of non profesional cubans) it is possible to give free education to foreign students..
2.- "This will improve one day" Does he really thinks that? After 48 years of Fidel telling life quality will improve, it is kind of hard to continue believing it. Maybe he was afraid of saying something else?
(3.- Do any of these american students that go to Cuba, Have though about the fact that when Fidel took the power in Cuba, 1959, Eisenhower was the president of the United States?? Do somebody yet believes that life under that regime in Cuba will improve one day for Cubans?

[hdu]

Defecting Cubans stranded in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia - At least 38 Cuban doctors who defected from a mission in Venezuela have been stranded for months in Colombia, where they have been refused refugee status as they await word on possible asylum in the United States, according to a relief organization….
…More than 500 doctors are believed to have fled the two missions in recent years, most from Venezuela, Alfonso said.
Like Toledo and Viamonte, who live in a tiny apartment where even the plates and dish towels are on loan, the majority of asylum-seeking Cuban doctors are living in precarious tenements because they are unable to work in Colombia without refugee status.
The couple said they applied for refugee status at the U.S. Embassy on Aug. 11, the same day the new program was announced in Washington. Only one of eight other doctors who applied the same day has so far been granted entry to the U.S., they said.
Toledo and Viamonte said they sneaked into Colombia in December 2005, switching taxis five times while driving from town to town and slipping across the border from Venezuela at night.
A friend later smuggled out of Cuba their university diplomas and other government records accrediting them as doctors.
Toledo and Viamonte were assigned to Venezuela in mid-2003 as part of the Miracle Mission in which Cuba and Venezuela have provided free eye surgery to more than 375,000 poor Latin Americans.
The couple said they were forced to work seven days a week for little pay in the countryside near Caracas, and their relations with Venezuelans were tightly controlled.
"We couldn't call our families or go out after 5 p.m. The Venezuelan national guard and Cuban authorities watched our every move," Viamonte said. "We never planned on abandoning our duty, but we got tired of being treated like slaves."
The couple planned their escape over a year, even keeping their plans secret from their 12-year old son, who lives with Viamonte's parents, when they returned to Cuba for a vacation in July 2005.
Alfonso said Colombia's government — Washington's closest ally in Latin America — has so far only given the Cuban doctors a pass of safe-conduct that is renewable every three months.
Toledo and Viamonte say they live in fear of being deported to Cuba.
"We didn't ask for this law — we thought it was a miracle when this program was announced because it was so explicit and clear," said Toledo, fighting back tears and anger. "Not even for a second did we think we or anyone else would be turned back."

[Atrain97]

Originally Posted by hdu

Defecting Cubans stranded in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia - At least 38 Cuban doctors who defected from a mission in Venezuela have been stranded for months in Colombia, where they have been refused refugee status as they await word on possible asylum in the United States, according to a relief organization….
…More than 500 doctors are believed to have fled the two missions in recent years, most from Venezuela, Alfonso said.
Like Toledo and Viamonte, who live in a tiny apartment where even the plates and dish towels are on loan, the majority of asylum-seeking Cuban doctors are living in precarious tenements because they are unable to work in Colombia without refugee status.
The couple said they applied for refugee status at the U.S. Embassy on Aug. 11, the same day the new program was announced in Washington. Only one of eight other doctors who applied the same day has so far been granted entry to the U.S., they said.
Toledo and Viamonte said they sneaked into Colombia in December 2005, switching taxis five times while driving from town to town and slipping across the border from Venezuela at night.
A friend later smuggled out of Cuba their university diplomas and other government records accrediting them as doctors.
Toledo and Viamonte were assigned to Venezuela in mid-2003 as part of the Miracle Mission in which Cuba and Venezuela have provided free eye surgery to more than 375,000 poor Latin Americans.
The couple said they were forced to work seven days a week for little pay in the countryside near Caracas, and their relations with Venezuelans were tightly controlled.
"We couldn't call our families or go out after 5 p.m. The Venezuelan national guard and Cuban authorities watched our every move," Viamonte said. "We never planned on abandoning our duty, but we got tired of being treated like slaves."
The couple planned their escape over a year, even keeping their plans secret from their 12-year old son, who lives with Viamonte's parents, when they returned to Cuba for a vacation in July 2005.
Alfonso said Colombia's government — Washington's closest ally in Latin America — has so far only given the Cuban doctors a pass of safe-conduct that is renewable every three months.
Toledo and Viamonte say they live in fear of being deported to Cuba.
"We didn't ask for this law — we thought it was a miracle when this program was announced because it was so explicit and clear," said Toledo, fighting back tears and anger. "Not even for a second did we think we or anyone else would be turned back."

You see Castro knows that his only fame in the world after a spoiled revolution is his reputation in health care. A system by the way that was pretty much in place well before he took power. In fact it was one of the things he did not tweak with very much. He uses medicine as a political tool. There are doctors are exported around the world to take care of the "poor" in other countries. Imagine "doctor's without borders" except you don't have a choice. All the while there is lack of supplies and healthcae in their own country. I am amazed that U.S. students would even go there regardless of the price of education and frankly even more amazed that the U.S. government and state and local governments are giving those of us who are at other FMS's a hard time about where we can practice and which school is approved by whom, when there are students attending a university in a country that techinically as an American you cannot even travel to. I believe I love medicine, and yes I would do it for much less money than many other things, but most of us did not take the easy way out and we chose to assume a later start on life and sleepless nights as did these doctors, and you answer me this: Who is going to want to be a doctor and go through these sacrifices if you have to ride a bus and make $30 a month? Go ahead, tell me I am evil for wanting to be rewarded more than my local garbage man for going to school for half of my life expectancy. I find all these articles amusing really and I am surprised students still defend this brand of propaganda even on this message board. Around the world Castro is loved by the poor and disenfranchised but here we have it, proof of what his own people think as if thousands a year floating across one of the most dangerous straits in the world isn't proof enough...truly amazing.

[hdu]

Cubans feel betrayed by tourist playground

The Telegraph
London
U.K.
Infosearch
Fidel Nuñez
Research Dept.
La Nueva Cuba
February 13, 2007

..."It's a little like being in a zoo," sighed Carlos, a 24-year-old literature student. "But that is the reality of life here. We are caged while the world looks on."...
..."Fidel has starved us," he whispered. "Yes, there is a lack of food but it is more than that. We are starving for information, for opportunity, for freedom. We want to enjoy the same things as those people over there," he said as a fresh batch of tourists spilled out of the doors of a tour bus.
Cubans struggle to survive on an average wage of less than £10 a month to supplement the state rations which provide them with basics such as rice and beans and either one small bar of soap or tube of toothpaste a month.
Visiting foreigners can spend almost double that on a taxi ride to the airport or a meal in one of Old Havana's state-run restaurants.
"It sticks in the throat," says Oscar Espinosa, an independent economist and dissident who was jailed in 2003 for criticising the regime's economic strategy and is now confined to his home on conditional release.
"Such obvious inequality in a country where for decades the people have laboured in the mistaken belief that they are creating a classless society. The truth is we have created a paradise for tourists and those that live off them, but for the rest of us, daily life gets worse," he said
Cuba's society has been split into those with access to the CUC, the convertible currency used by tourists and sent in remittances from those abroad, and the majority of the population who must rely solely on their salary paid in Cuban pesos.
Castro introduced the dual currency in the 1990s as a means of the boosting the economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union when Cuba threw open its doors to foreign tourists. Last year almost 2.5 million foreign travellers, mainly from Canada, Britain, Italy, Spain and Mexico, visited the Caribbean island.
The changes are credited with keeping the economy afloat but also created a vast and troublesome gap between the population of 11 million dividing those who have the convertible currency and those who don't.
"You can't buy anything with Cuban pesos," said Mr Espinosa. "Anything worth buying – soap, cooking oil, shoes – must all be purchased in convertibles.
"We are in a situation where a bell hop or a chambermaid can earn many times the salary of a doctor or civil engineer. What incentive is there now to train to be such a thing?"
Mr Espinosa and many others hope that Castro's younger brother will be less inclined to rhetoric and more likely to address the main sources of complaints from Cubans: high food prices, the lack of transport and dilapidated housing.
Nowhere is the divide more noticeable than in the historic quarter of Old Havana where crumbling edifices are being carefully restored and converted into boutique hotels and high-price restaurants.
The cobbled streets and palm shaded squares, formerly the haunt of Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, are once again frequented by wealthy foreigners eager to sip Mojitos in pavement cafes.
But two blocks from Obispo Street with its newly opened designer shoe shops, Cuban children play barefoot in the shadow of crumbling tenement houses where a family of seven might share one room.
"They are doing a wonderful job making this place nice," said Susana Cruz sarcastically as she waited to collect her weekly ration of rice and beans.
"My sister used to live in a place that was falling down. Last year the government came and rebuilt the whole place top to bottom," she explained.
"My sister and her two young children live with me now in my place which is falling down. But you should go and visit her old place," she laughed. "It's a hotel now and I hear it has a lovely bar on the terrace where she used to hang out her clothes."


MY COMMENT: BUT LET'S GIVE FREE EDUCATION TO FOREIGN STUDENTS, SINCE THEY WILL TALK WONDERFUL THINGS ABOUT CUBAN REVOLUTION!