Cuba's Preventive Health Care Rated High
Ex-U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders toured the island's facilities and came away impressed.

Orlando Sentinel
October 14, 2001

HAVANA, Cuba -- Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn
Elders said that Cuba's health care system is better at
keeping people healthy than the U.S. system.

After a recent two-day tour to speak with doctors and tour
medical facilities on the communist island, Elders said she
was impressed with the quality of Cuba's preventive primary
health care, especially compared with the U.S. system.

"Cuba's is better," she said. "They work at keeping people
healthy."

Elders said the United States still has better health care
for patients who were sick.

Cuba lacks important medicines and equipment, said many of
the five doctors who traveled to Cuba in the trip sponsored
by the Disarm Education Fund. The group has sent more than
$65 million worth of medicines and medical supplies to Cuba.

New York neurologist Robert White said most of the island's
equipment was old.

"I didn't see anything there that I recognized anymore,
other than in a museum," he said.

White, who traveled to Cuba six years ago, argued that the
embargo should be lifted for moral reasons.

"People have died," he said. "People are dying, and this
includes children."

The Cuban government has long argued against the
four-decades-long embargo against its country, and an
increasing number of Democrats and Republicans have called
for its end.

President George W. Bush, however, has said he wants to
maintain current U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Elders served as the 16th surgeon general, from 1993-95,
under President Bill Clinton. She was fired in December 1994
after saying at a United Nations AIDS conference that
discussion of masturbation should be part of sex education
in schools.