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Originally Posted by powerclown
I'm curious to know why Moore took some Americans to Cuba for a doctor's appointment yet Castro had to bring in Spanish doctors for his illness.
Spain > Cuba > US ?
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powerclown's "question" is influenced by a campaign on the anti Michael More blogs on the "internets"....such a closed little circular world they dwell in:
Quote:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsea...stro%20spanish
Michael Moore v. Fred Thompson
15 May 2007 by Kim Priestap
Recall that Castro had to be treated by Spanish doctors for his recent ailments. :: by George on May 15, 2007 5:12 PM ::. Whatever Hollywood is standing for, I ain't buying. socialism/communism- check narcissism- check hedonism- check ...
Wizbang - http://wizbangblog.com/ - References
[ More results from Wizbang ]
Michael Moore should schedule his next surgery in Cuba; Castro ...
23 May 2007 by keepitreal
A January story in the Spanish newspaper El Pais described Castro as being in “very grave” condition after at least three failed operations. The Cuban government denied that report. http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070524/D8PAGKF80. ...
Keepin' It Real! - http://keepinitreal.wordpress.com
Michael Moore Gets Richer
10 May 2007 by beth
Not to mention that Castro himself flew in Spanish doctors to try to cure his …. what looks for all the world to be colon cancer. That makes me wonder …. do you think that Michael Moore and his entourage saw the health care that is ...
Blue Star Chronicles - http://bluestarchronicles.com - References
Michael Moore's Sicko
15 Apr 2007 by Kevin
One might think that Moore's argument here would have been undermined by Fidel Castro himself, who had to import Spanish physicians to treat him in his extremity earlier this year." The Opinion Mill: "After decades of paralysis brought ...
Kevin, MD - Medical Weblog - http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/ - References
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Quote:
Spanish Doctor Is Said to Be Aiding Castro
New York Times. New York, N.Y.: Dec 25, 2006. pg. A.5
A renowned Spanish surgeon has been flown to Cuba to try to stop a steady deterioration in President Fidel Castro's health, a Spanish newspaper reported Sunday.
The surgeon, Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, an intestinal specialist, traveled to Cuba on Thursday on an aircraft chartered by the Cuban government, said the left-leaning newspaper, El Periodico de Catalunya.
Dr. Garcia Sabrido was to carry out tests on Mr. Castro to see if he needed another operation after he underwent emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding in July, the newspaper said, citing hospital sources.
<h3>The doctor's plane carried advanced medical equipment not available in Cuba, the paper reported.</h3>
Dr. Garcia Sabrido was among doctors <b>who presented their work at a surgery conference in Havana last month, according to the conference's Web site.</b>
Cuban officials say Mr. Castro is not dying and is expected to return to public life. But he has skipped recent public appearances, including his 80th birthday celebration, and appeared to be frail and walking with difficulty in video images released in October.
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.....and blah, blah, fucking blah....and on it goes, for 2000+ entries....bad rich Michael Moore......sheesh !!!
Nothing about Jeb Bush and his european Cuban south florida political base, and their influence on keeping up the financial and trade embargo on CUba and it's effect on Cuba's healthcare system.....
Instead of wondering why third world Cuba, hobbled by extreme economic conditions and by the US embargo, still manages a lower infant mortality rate, per the CIA Factbook data, compared to the rate in the US, powerclown tows his "party line"....let's cut apart Michael Moore !!!!!!!!!
It's old, powerclown....sheeeesh !!!!!!!!!
Quote:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/...uba_Castro.php
Report: Spanish surgeon flown to Cuba treat Castro
The Associated Press
Published: December 24, 2006
MADRID, Spain: A leading Spanish surgeon has flown to Havana to treat ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a Spanish newspaper reported Sunday.
Barcelona-based El Periodico said Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, chief surgeon at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon hospital, was taken to the Cuban capital Thursday on a Cuban government chartered flight. The newspaper said he took with him medical material not available in Cuba.
No one was available Sunday at either the Gregorio Maranon hospital or the Cuban embassy to comment on the report.
Castro, 80, has not appeared in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July. Since then here has been little information from Cuba regarding his condition. Castro has placed his younger brother, Raul, in charge of government.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Castro, recently denied reports that the Cuban communist leader was suffering from cancer.
Although aware of Castro's condition, Sabrido was to examine him in person before deciding whether the Cuban leader should undergo more surgery, El Periodico said.
The paper said the doctor had operated on several important personalities in the past but it gave no names.
It added that Garcia Sabrido had recently addressed a surgery congress in Cuba.
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Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba#Embargo
In a 2006 report to the U.N. Secretary-General, Cuba acknowledged the authorization of medicines, though stated that they were subject to severe restrictions and complicated procedures. Cuba is obliged to make payments in cash and in advance, and is precluded from obtaining credit funding, even from private sources. The sale and transportation of the goods require licences to be obtained for each transaction. Cuba cannot use its own merchant fleet for transporting these goods, but has to make use of vessels from third countries, primarily the United States. Payments are made through banks in third countries, since direct banking relationships are prohibited. The Cuban delegation concluded that restrictions on importing medical products were "so extensive that they make such imports virtually impossible". The World Health organisation/PAHO and UNFPA concurred that it was impossible for Cuba to purchase equipment, medicines and laboratory materials produced by the United States or covered by United States patents, even though those products were purchased through multilateral cooperation. Cuba was not able to purchase the isotope I-125 that is used to treat eye cancer in children. The companies manufacturing reagents and equipment are 70 per cent United States owned, which makes it difficult to purchase necessary medical equipment and other items[36]
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The Hemorrhaging of Cuba's Health Care; Doctors Without Data, Patients Without Drugs: U.S. Embargo, Economic Crisis Cripple a Showcase System; [FINAL Edition]
Molly Moore. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Feb 23, 1998
The Washington Post Company Feb 23, 1998
In the operating rooms of Calixto Garcia Hospital, surgeons reuse disposable plastic gloves until they split open. Patients often wait days to receive X-rays because the hospital has run out of film. And the medications physicians prescribe frequently are unavailable at the hospital pharmacy.
"We have difficulties with everything," said a senior administrator at the hospital, where hallways are dark for lack of light bulbs and broken equipment languishes in austere laboratories and examination rooms.
"This used to be our country's premier research hospital. Now we pass around photocopies of medical journals because we can't get the latest literature, we move patients from hospital to hospital searching for equipment that works, and we run out of everything from sutures to syringes to doctors' scrub gowns."
Cuba's health care system -- once a showcase of the developing world that compared favorably to U.S. and European medical services -- is crumbling beneath the pressures of a national economic crisis and a U.S. trade embargo that have left hospitals short of equipment and patients without access to drugs, say Cuban and international medical authorities.
"A relatively sophisticated and comprehensive public health system is being systematically stripped of essential resources," concluded a detailed study of the Cuban health system by the American Association for World Health, the U.S. committee of the World Health Organization.
No Cuban institution has been harder hit by the economic catastrophes of the last decade than its health care system, which grants free medical services to all citizens as a constitutional right. Cuba was convulsed by an unprecedented economic collapse when its former communist allies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe disintegrated, severing the Caribbean island nation from billions of dollars in annual financial assistance and trade.
Nearly simultaneously, in 1992, the U.S. government further tightened its trade restrictions against Cuba, banning the sale of most U.S. products to Cuba through third-country intermediaries. As a result, Cuba cannot buy medical equipment or medicines from U.S. companies or subsidiaries of those firms without the approval of the U.S. government. Critics say the procedure for obtaining exemptions is so cumbersome that few companies even apply for the special licenses.
The health care crisis has become so acute that legislation has been introduced in both the U.S. House and the Senate to ease some embargo restrictions on medicines and food, efforts that were bolstered by Pope John Paul II's denouncements of the embargo's impact on Cubans' health during his January visit to the island.
There are few aspects of the economic crisis that don't touch the health care system: Shortages of gas and tires idle ambulances; power shortages destroy equipment and perishable medications and vaccines; and chronic water shortages and improper treatment of drinking water have led to disease and sanitation problems. Cuba's pharmaceutical factories produce a third of the medicines and drugs they manufactured a decade ago. Pharmacies routinely run out of even the most basic hygiene products, especially women's sanitary napkins.
Even though Cubans have a life expectancy of 75 years -- only one year lower than in the United States -- the strains on the health, water and sanitation systems is beginning to take a heavy toll.
The death rate from diarrheal diseases increased 250 percent between 1989 and 1994. Nutrition levels have dropped by as much as one-third because of food shortages and poverty, leaving more than 50,000 people with weakened eyesight and motor function. Hospitalization is now risky because of the increased chance of infection: In 1995, dirty water in hospitals led to infection outbreaks that killed 60 patients and sickened another 289.
The number of surgeries performed dropped 40 percent between 1990 and 1995 due to shortages of material, medicines and equipment. There were one-third fewer outpatients in Havana's top pediatrics hospital in the same period because of chronic shortages.
Many physicians, whose salaries are the equivalent of about $20 a month, are deserting the system to take jobs in the tourist industry, driving taxis and working in hotels, where they can earn more money and be paid in U.S. dollars.
But, while the number of doctors fell 38 percent between 1970 and 1990, the figure has begun climbing slowly, because of a government push to put more students in medical schools. In 1995, Cuba had 56,925 physicians -- 92 percent of its 1970 levels, and one for every 195 people.
Trends in the global marketplace have exacerbated the staggering problems faced by the Cuban health system. With U.S. pharmaceutical giants buying increasing numbers of medical companies in Europe and elsewhere, Cuba effectively has been shut out of many of the newest advances in equipment and treatments because of embargo restrictions, say international physicians' groups.
In addition, Cuban hospitals have found it almost impossible to buy replacement parts for equipment purchased from major suppliers that are now U.S.-owned. "It's an unfortunate coincidence that right at the time when the Soviet Union was pulling out, U.S. corporations were buying European companies," said Peter Bourne, a physician, chairman of the board of the American Association for World Health and a frequent visitor to Cuba. "Now there are some drugs only made in the United States. They can't get them anywhere -- it wouldn't matter how much money they had."
Some of the most advanced discoveries in the treatment of cancer, AIDS and other serious ailments are being patented by U.S. companies. Cuban hospitals will not have access to many of those U.S.-patented drugs until they are covered under international patent rights 17 years after obtaining U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, according to U.S. medical authorities.
The American Association for World Health, in its year-long study completed last year, said new life-prolonging treatments for small children with kidney problems -- an area in which U.S. companies have made tremendous progress in recent years -- are unavailable to Cubans because of restrictions on U.S.-made equipment and U.S.-patented drugs.
"Cuban children have no access to dialysis processes that could keep them alive for years rather than months," according to the report. The study added that some breast cancer drugs approved in 1996 are not "legally an option for these patients, should they still be alive, until the year 2013."
The physicians and researchers who participated in the investigation cited dozens of obstacles facing the Cuban health care system as officials are forced to scour the globe for equipment, replacement parts and medicines. Often the searches mean longer waits and higher prices for critical purchases. The U.S. team reported that patient care is affected by the inability of many hospitals to obtain materials such as nausea-prevention drugs for children undergoing chemotherapy, pacemakers for heart patients and new treatments for people with AIDS.
Even so, Cuba has reduced its already low infant mortality rate. Last year Cuba had 7.2 infant deaths per 1,000 live births -- the same as the U.S. average, half the rate of D.C. and a rate six times lower than many of its Latin American neighbors.
The health care system has shifted its dwindling resources to the care of children from birth through age 5 and is investing heavily in more than 18,000 neighborhood family clinics in its cities and villages.
Ana Margarita Ramirez, 33, a physician, and her nurse, Silvia Reyes Lores, 34, are one of the thousands of doctor-nurse teams who run neighborhood practices. Their office is a clean but Spartan cluster of rooms in a small government building named for a 15-year-old who "died fighting the imperialists at the Bay of Pigs, April 19, 1961," according to an engraved plaque near the front door.
"All this is mine," said Ramirez, sweeping her arms across a neighborhood of low-rise concrete block apartments. She ministers to about 500 families, holding office hours in the morning, then spending her afternoons checking on the elderly and the sick and dispensing preventative medical advice to the healthy.
"I don't have as many resources anymore, I have more work, and I don't have all the medicines I need, but I'm helping my people," said Ramirez.
[Illustration]
PHOTO,,Molly Moore CAPTION:CUBA'S HEALTH CARE WOES The American Association for World Health, in a year-long study of the Cuban health care system, found that embargo restrictions on medical products made by U.S. companies or their subsidiaries have affected patient care dramatically. Examples of the problems cited by the U.S. medical team: A pediatric ward was on its 22nd day without medications needed to help suppress nausea in children receiving chemotherapy treatments. "Without these drugs' nausea-preventing effects, the 35 children in the ward were vomiting an average of 28 to 30 times a day," the report said. A serious shortage of kidney dialysis machines resulted in most patients having access to only partial treatment or none at all. When a European organization donated 59 U.S.-made dialysis units to Cuba, only 29 could be kept in working order because the necessary parts could not be obtained to repair the other 30. Swedish Pharmacia, one of Cuba's leading suppliers of chemotherapy drugs and growth hormones for treating cancer patients, was forced to cut off sales to Cuba in 1995 when the company merged with the U.S. pharmaceutical titan Upjohn. Buyouts by U.S. companies have left Cuba without its two main suppliers of pacemakers. Difficulties in procuring birth control pills from non-U.S.-owned companies mean that women often receive a different brand of pill with varying dosages each time they fill a monthly prescription. In 1994 and 1995, Havana's mammography program was shut down for months at a time because the health system ran out of X-ray film. Now, even when the equipment is functioning, the embargo denies hospitals access to the world's safest film, which is produced by Eastman Kodak Co. and its subsidiaries. CAPTION: A woman emerges from one of the often understocked state-run pharmacies. CAPTION: A pharmacist and his sparsely stocked shelves: U.S. trade restrictions ban the sale of most American products to Cuba. CAPTION: The shabby Calixto Garcia Hospital, once a premier research facility.
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