talking about Medical tourism in Latin America plus other issues this week with Silvio and Prof. Carlos A. Roncal.
Live now, and archived for your convenience.
Venezuela: Entire medical system collapsing
Back when Hugo Chavez was alive, he imported 30,000 Cuban “doctors” (some of which eventually defected), and began buying most medical equipment through Cuba, China and Argentina instead of from the suppliers.
Now the whole country’s medical system – both the “free” healthcare and the private – is collapsing, as Frank Bajak reports:
DOCTORS SAY VENEZUELA’S HEALTH CARE IN COLLAPSE
Last month, the government suspended organ donations and transplants. At least 70 percent of radiotherapy machines, precisely what Gonzalez will need once her tumor is removed, are now inoperable in a country with 19,000 cancer patients – meaning fewer than 5,000 can be treated, said Dr. Douglas Natera, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.
Disintegration: Another look at universal health care in Venezuela
Needles, syringes and paraffin used in biopsies to diagnose cancer, drugs to treat it, operating room equipment, X-ray film and imaging paper, blood and the reagents needed so it can be used for transfusions are all in desperately short supply.
Alberto de la Cruz points out the Cubanization of Venezuela:
Under the “leadership” of their puppet governor Nicolas Maduro, this Cuban colony has managed to become almost completely Cubanized in just a few short months. Implementing the same strategies in Venezuela as they have done in Cuba, the Castro dictatorship has driven the health care system in that country into the ground. Unfortunately for them, they have no “embargo” to blame for this destruction. And another unfortunate situation for Cuba’s Castro dictatorship and their sycophants brought about by this development is that it once again proves that the atrocious health care system in Cuba (and now in Venezuela) has nothing to do with “embargoes.” Instead, it has everything to do with corruption and mismanagement at the hands of the criminal and totalitarian Castro regime.
Read the horrifying report here.
Garcia, Lee and Rangel lying for Castro?
Capitol Hill Cubans posts,
Why Are U.S. Reps. Garcia, Lee and Rangel Lying for Castro Pharma?
The recent letter devised by U.S. Reps. Joe Garcia (D-FL), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Charlie Rangel (D-NY), among others, pushing for Castro’s latest bio-scam makes the following accusation:
“Despite the high burden of disease, patients and physicians in the U.S. are frustrated, not only by the lack of an effective treatment, but by the lack of a U.S. Pharmaceutical/Biotech effort at developing potential treatments for severe DFU (diabetic foot ulcers).”
This statement is blatantly dishonest.
Indeed it is, as a quick search will show (including stem-cell research conducted across the USA), but CHC went further,
With the help of medical professionals, we’ve been able to easily track down a host of treatments for DFU, most of which have already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
These include Terrasil, Apligraf, Excellagen, MIST Therapy, Regranex, Dermagraft, ArterioFlow 7500, HealOr, dermaPACE, Grafix, et. al.
Why the lie, then?
Because this whole scam is more about anti-U.S., pro-Castro propaganda, than any serious medical effort.
Indeed.
Brazil: Unions to challenge use of Cuban doctors
Capitol Hill Cubans:
Brazilian Unions Challenge Exploitation of Cuban Doctors
Brazilian medical unions are trying to mount a court challenge to the use of Cuban doctors [t]here.
Jose Roberto Murisset, the human rights secretary of the National Doctors Federation, says that the Cuban government takes most of the money that is paid for the doctors. The Brazilian government has also decreed that the Cuban doctors have no right to ask for asylum in Brazil.
“Brazil has strong labor rights, but these Cuban doctors don’t have their rights guaranteed,” he says.
The main bone of contention is that foreign doctors arriving under the new program don’t have to take the Brazilian medical exam to practice. Murisset says that many of the doctors coming from abroad would fail the test and are underqualifed.
NPR report: ‘Castrocare’ Divides Doctors In Cuba, Brazil
Ah, the irony: Fidel Castro himself had to import a full operating room and surgical team along with an oncologist, Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, when he needed treatment. ‘Castrocare’, indeed.
Corruption in Venezuela’s Cuban medical missions
Lengthy first-hand account of
Cuba’s Medical Missions in Venezuela: Hotspot for Corruption
The Business of La Pradera
The well-known (and questionable) health services agreement between Caracas and Havana contains a clause that has existed since April of 2001: the sending of Venezuelan patients (mainly the poorest) to Cuba, to receive medical attention at the La Pradera International Health Center located in Siboney, Havana, and to other hospitals in the capital that have been equipped for such services.
It was a top priority mission which was overseen every Friday, in the early hours of the morning, by Fidel Castro himself (until stepping down due to illness in 2006). I can offer a detailed testimony of this because I worked in this mission every Friday from 2001 to 2003, and was even entrusted with secret tasks during this time.
To get a sense of the importance of this whole affair, suffice it to know that the Venezuelan patients were transported to Havana in Fidel Castro’s personal plane (flown by his crew).
The patients were selected during field surveys conducted by the medical doctors in each of Venezuela’s municipalities or states. Following this selection process, the patients files were sent to the Miraflores presidential palace for a final assessment and then the patients traveled to Havana.
As in other areas, the more streetwise and business-minded Cubans came along and began to profit from this privileged service Cuba was offering poor Venezuelan patients. That is how seats on these flights to Cuba began to be sold.
Who were making these sales? It wasn’t the doctors out in the field, working hard to overcome many difficulties in Venezuela’s most recondite places. It was those in charge of these missions, those who represented Cuba at Miraflores: Dr. Rafael Garcia Portela, head of the control office responsible for sending Venezuelan patients to La Pradera, and his colleague Frank Diaz, as well as their respective wives.
These white-collar criminals set up their base of operations in Caracas’ presidential palace, selling seats on the Havana-bound plane for US $2,000 and even $3,000. The beneficiaries were the relatives of Venezuelan government officials and the country’s bourgeoisie (from both the Chavista and not-so Chavista camp).
When we came upon these crimes, after going over the clinical histories, names and social strata of the patients, the officials in charge of the investigation almost immediately discovered that they had even used fake names and resorted to unlawful proceedings to carry out the activities.
During a coordination meeting, we sent a report to Hugo Chavez, who immediately consulted with his mentor and the project sponsor, Fidel Castro. Time passed and we saw no measures taken by the government, which failed to explain why some rich people could hop on the plane with tickets sold to them by the criminals at Miraflores.
Chavez’ Father
Officials at La Pradera, corrupt Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) officials and even Central Committee members involved in coordinating these activities were getting a cut out of those US $3,000.
These “bombshells” about the idealized health plan aimed at poor Venezuelans began to go off in Cuba, but Fidel Castro was told a different story and the whole thing was shelved.
Read the whole thing.
Brasil: Médico cubano relata exploração do trabalho na Ilha dos irmãos Castro
Cuban doctor Carlos Rafael Jorge Jiménez, now a naturalized Brazilian citizen, speaks out at the Chamber of Deputies (Congress) about the reality of the slave labor conditions Cuban “doctors” will endure. If you understand Spanish, you’ll understand his Portuguese.
Brazil: Prosecutor wants to investigate the Cuban doctors deal
Just the other day I was wondering what the back-room deals were; now a Brazilian prosecutor wants to check deal for 4,000 Cuban doctors, and not just any prosecutor but the chief prosecutor in the labor fraud section of the Office of the District Attorney:
One aspect of the agreement that raises “a very large legal uncertainty,” he said, is the use of the Pan American Health Organization, a Washington-based branch of the World Health Organization, as the financial middleman between the Brazilian and Cuba governments.
Prosecutors also will check whether the contract means the Cubans will be paid less than the minimum required by Brazilian law, and whether the no-bid contract was properly awarded, Ramos Pereira was quoted as saying.
The slave labor deal so far is on
Although one senior Health Ministry official has been quoted as saying the Cubans will get the same salary they receive on the island, where salaries are much lower, Health Minister Alexandre Padilha has said it will be up to the Cuban government to decide how much it will pay to its personnel.
That’s $200/month.
Brazil will be paying Cuba $4,080/month for each of the doctors “and other health workers”.
Slavery by any other name is still slavery.
Brazil: Cuban doctors now OK
I don’t know what the back-room negotiations were, but the Brazilian government has changed its mind, even when the medical association doesn’t want uncertified Cuban medics:
The Brazilian Health Ministry signed an agreement Wednesday with the U.S.-based Pan-American Health Organization, or PAHO, to bring 4,000 doctors from Cuba by the end of the year. They’ll participate in a program—known as Mais Médicos, or “more doctors”–that the government launched in July amid massive street demonstrations calling for better public services such as health care.
Good luck wit that; Doctors are not Cuba’s only import, there’s also cholera:
in the past several weeks, there has been five cases (Italy (1), Venezuela (2) and Chile (2)) of cholera reported, all related to travel to Cuba.
Then there’s the issue of the Cuban doctors not knowing how to treat TB, HIV or the complications of diabetes, or even women in labor.
Domestically, that highly-touted, fictional “excellent free Cuban healthcare” is about to get worse: Back in 2007 I posted about the doctor shortage in Cuba, created from the “doctor”-import business when one-fifth of Cuba’s health care labor supply – some 14,000 doctors and 6,000 health workers – has been contracted out to work in Venezuela.
The doctor trade is hugely profitable for the Cuban government,
Under the program, Brazil’s federal government pays doctors a monthly salary of 10,000 Brazilian reais ($4,098) to work three years in urban slums and other needy areas such as rural towns, the Amazon River basin and impoverished northeastern states, where medics have long been scarce. In the case of doctors from Communist-run Cuba, the money will be channeled through PAHO from the Brazilian government to the Cuban government, a Health Ministry official said.
Of that $4,098, the Cuban government will give the “doctors” a $200/month allowance, and the rest (after PAHO’s commission), is pure profit.
Carlos Eire asks, Is the real issue here medical care, or that awful euphemism for the kind of corrupt politics that leftists love to call “solidarity”?
You be the judge.
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