About Cuban health
There is a must-read article in The Miami Herald today looking at Cuba’s impressively low infant mortality rate – and how the Castro regime ensures the rates are kept low.
According to evidence from Cuban doctors who have defected in the recent past, pregnant women are tested regularly during their pregnancy, and those found to be carrying a foetus with serious health problems - such as a heart murmur - are then "required" to terminate the pregnancy.
And so, the regime and its international apologists can confidently use the infant mortality statistics to counter concerns about Castro's otherwise nasty and oppressive record.
The newspaper also quotes research conducted by US and British academics confirming that contrary to the propaganda promoted by the regime for decades, the infant mortality rate in Cuba was already among the lowest in Latin America before Fidel Castro took over.
In fact, the infant mortality rate in Cuba in the late 1950s was lower than it was in Spain or Italy.
In the intervening years, the researchers concluded, Cuba's infant mortality rate improved significantly, but other countries in Latin America improved at an even faster rate - and Italy and Spain easily bypassed Cuba.
Now, all this stuff has been known for some time to those who follow Cuban affairs closely. So, it's hardly news.
But it’s still refreshing to see the facts published in a mainstream US newspaper.
According to evidence from Cuban doctors who have defected in the recent past, pregnant women are tested regularly during their pregnancy, and those found to be carrying a foetus with serious health problems - such as a heart murmur - are then "required" to terminate the pregnancy.
And so, the regime and its international apologists can confidently use the infant mortality statistics to counter concerns about Castro's otherwise nasty and oppressive record.
The newspaper also quotes research conducted by US and British academics confirming that contrary to the propaganda promoted by the regime for decades, the infant mortality rate in Cuba was already among the lowest in Latin America before Fidel Castro took over.
In fact, the infant mortality rate in Cuba in the late 1950s was lower than it was in Spain or Italy.
In the intervening years, the researchers concluded, Cuba's infant mortality rate improved significantly, but other countries in Latin America improved at an even faster rate - and Italy and Spain easily bypassed Cuba.
Now, all this stuff has been known for some time to those who follow Cuban affairs closely. So, it's hardly news.
But it’s still refreshing to see the facts published in a mainstream US newspaper.
posted by Luis M Garcia at 10:10 am
1 Comments:
Change "infant mortality" for "illiteracy" and it's the same story. In 60 years from independence Cuba had gone from country that was 80% illiterate to one that was 20% illiterate. 60 years is a very short time for such a radical turn around. At the time (1958), Cuba was near the top in literacy in Latin America. Castro apologists point to the literacy in in high 90s as a justification for the dicatorship yet the same countries that had comparable literacy rates in 1958 have them now without the "benefit" of a nasty, murderous totalitarian.
It's a bunch of bunk and the reporters in the free press of the world that continue to use these concocted Cuban figures are accomplices in the Cuban tragedy.
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