Cuba Sends Aid To Africa.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/cuba-leads-fights-against-ebola-africa

Interesting to see that tiny Cuba have been so quick to provide such excellent aid to those Western African countries stricken with the deadly Ebola disease.

But how dare the Guardian suggest that the UK have not been 'STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE', when we were the first as usual to send aid.

/// But big hitters such as China or Brazil, or former colonial powers such France and the UK, have not been stepping up to the plate. Instead, the single biggest medical force on the Ebola front-line has been a small island: Cuba. ///

[sandyRoe]

Two relatively small islands on either side of the Atlantic clearly punching above their weight. We, and our Latin American friends, can justly feel proud.

[Gromit]

Cuba has an excellent health system, which puts to shame the US and other well off countries. Their medical expertise is a source of national pride, so it is no surprise that they are eager to get on the world stage.

As an aside, I know several Cubans, and if they have any medical problems, they are off back home instead of using the NHS.

[jno]

Cuba is famous for its medical service. If more Cubans than Brits have been stepping up to the plate, that is worthy of remark; we are much bigger and wealthier than Cuba is.

[New Judge]

I don't know if you are quite up to date with your Cuban friends, Gromit. Cuba does indeed have some excellent health facilities and it has a high number of doctors per head of population. It also has very low mortality rates and very good survival rates for the major diseases. The problem is that in recent years, particularly since the loss of Soviet support in the 1990s, they have been sending huge numbers of their trained medics abroad - principally to their allies in South America whose help they have sought in their fifty year battle against the US embargo. Cuba is keen to be seen as a world stage player in healthcare and the result is that the Cuban health system - for Cubans at least - is not quite all it is cracked up to be. This is based not on anything I've read but from speaking to people in Cuba during a visit I made earlier this year.

Incidentally, it is not quite appropriate to describe Cuba as a small or tiny island. It is the largest island in the Caribbean and although only half the area of the UK, is actually longer from east to west than mainland Britain is from north to south.

Of course it suits the Grauniad's agenda to *** off the UK whilst there is a Tory government principally in power. We should expect nothing less.

[Gromit]

New Judge,

Far from being a recent move, Cuba has exported Doctors to Latin Ametica since the Revolution. Far from it being a by product of the fall of the Soviet Union, it is a deliberate policy, the Programme started in the late 1950s.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism

Not sure who you were talking to in Cuba, but they appear to be the ones who are out of touch.

[jno]

the Guardian advised its readers to vote LibDem at the last election, so it has no particular reason to asterisk off the UK while its favoured party is in power.

[New Judge]

Just people who live and work there, Gromit. I couldn't argue the point one way or another as I have no first hand knowledge. I'm simply going on what a number of people told me (I always try to prise some info of this sort out of residents when I visit foreign climes). The main impression I gained from my chats was that doctors and nurses were being sent (usually against their will) to South America (mainly Venezuela) and that the health services in Cuba were being severely depleted as a result. As I say, just an impression I gained but I got a similar view from a number of people.

[Gromit]

New Judge,
I have been friends with some Cuban's for 20 years, and I know they would disagree with that. They travel to Cuba for their medical needs. In fact they are quite scathing about the NHS.
I have been visiting Turkey annually for 20 years and I know that gauging a country from what the locals say is very unreliable.

[New Judge]

It seems a bit strange that you give greater credence to the views of people who visit a country occasionally than I do to people who live there. After all, whose view of the UK's NHS would you trust, a "local" who lives here or an ex-pat who has spent twenty years abroad and visits occasionally to have his teeth done? But as I said, I cannot definitively argue the point.

[Svejk]

You can't blame gromit. If it weren't for Cuba he'd be stuck with North Korea.

[Gromit]

New judge,
They are not people who visit there occassionally, they are Cubans born and bred.
They are people I talk to every week, not just once on a holiday.
They are educated people who are in business, not bartenders and waitresses.

Svejk. Cheap jibe. True colours showing maybe.

[Svejk]

///They are educated people who are in business, not bartenders and waitresses///

Another socialist brimming with contempt for working class people. When did this start happening, or was it always thus?

[Gromit]

Svejk
Where your stupid statement falls down is assuming I am a socialist. I am not and never have claimed to be.

[mushroom25]

//I have been friends with some Cuban's for 20 years//

....some Cuban's what, Gromit? (your statement implies the possessive - if you meant several Cubans rather than a specific part of one, you don't use an apostrophe) :-)

[Svejk]

Sorry comrade. I always associate contempt for working-class people with the left.
I hope you told your, rather cheeky, VIP friends not to use our NHS again.

[anotheoldgit]

jno

/// the Guardian advised its readers to vote LibDem at the last election, so it has no particular reason to asterisk off the UK while its favoured party is in power. ///

Why should that stop them, it does not stop those Lib/Dems in power slagging off the Tory part of the government.

[New Judge]

I don't normally discuss such matters with bartenders and waitresses, Gromit. Among those with whom I discussed this particular issue was a doctor recently returned from a compulsory stint in Venezuela, now having to work as a plumber to supplement his income, a chap who had been trying, with little success because of the excessive bureaucracy involved, to open a small catering outlet in Santiago de Cuba and a tour guide who had good nursing qualifications but was unable to find a medical job which paid enough to support her and her family. All related similar views to me.

I suppose it’s the same the world over. Different people have different views of the relative merits of their state institutions. I just don’t think it is quite true to say that the Cuban health system is as good as it is made out to be. Not from what I’ve been told, anyway.

[Zeuhl]

(diverts thread - sorry aog)

dive: have you dived in Cuba?