Doctor in the house

Another day, another story about the great Cuban health care system.

This time it’s an “analysis” by UPI correspondent Rosalie Westenskow under the heading, “Healthcare lessons from Cuba?”

At least they added a question mark at the end, so let’s be thankful for small mercies.

The article has extensive quotes from several US academics, most of whom have nothing but praise for the excellent work undertaken by the Castro brothers.

An example?

How is this for positive endorsement: "The most important contribution that Cuba has given to global healthcare is … the idea that you can introduce the notion of broad healthcare and wipe out the diseases of poverty.”

A quote from Granma? Not at all. It’s a quote from Professor Paul Farmer, a professor of medical anthropologies at Harvard Medical School.

And to prove their point, Professor Farmer and his colleagues quote at length official statistics provided to the UN by … the Castro regime.

You can read the article here.

But you’d probably be better off having a look at an excellent paper on the Cuban health care system written by Professor Katherine Hirschfeld of the University of Oklahoma.

The paper, which is published in the latest edition of the online journal Cuban Affairs , paints a much more realistic picture of Cuban health care.

After spending nine months living with a Cuban family and interviewing family doctors, specialists, nurses and patients, Professor Hirschfeld also questions the integrity of the figures used by the regime to back up its claims.

Needless to say, these are the same figures used by academics and journalists to reach their unequivocally positive conclusions about health outcomes in Cuba. Nifty, eh?

Of course, as Professor Hirschfeld points out, there is a long history of otherwise inquisitive Western academics unquestioning accepting “official” statistics provided by totalitarian regimes – provided they are regimes of the Left, of course.

The Soviets were masters at the game.