The Myth of Cuban Health

This report was produced by Fundación Internacional Bases and translated into English by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Foreward

Cuban health has been one of the main political flags of many supporters of the Cuban regime, both on the American continent and globally, to justify the island’s political system. We have seen supranational organizations praise the system and local documentary filmmakers promote it.

Most of the presented arguments use the results of the official figures and the general egalitarian rules of Cuban health as the primary justification for the defense of said health structure. In our present document, originally published as three articles in a series on Fundación Internacional Bases’ website, we have compiled, summarized, and analyzed all the critical scientific studies and independent reports available concerning the Cuban health system and the statistics that it contains.

As can be seen from the report, the island’s health is nothing more than a myth. Cloaked by false and distorted statistics, the Cuban health system is crumbling to pieces. At the same time, in parallel, a better-quality structure is established for members of the regime and foreign citizens. As if this were not enough, a program that could be termed human trafficking uses medical professionals as a tool for political, propaganda, and revenue operations for the regime and its allies. Cuba’s health is neither good, efficient, nor egalitarian, but a perverse scam that unfairly treats its people and deceives the world in complicity with officials of international organizations. In the first section of the document, we will focus on the errors and distortions of the island’s health statistics; in the second part, we will highlight the failures and inequalities in the functioning of the health system. In the third and last section, we will analyze the problems of the missions Cuban Doctors International.

In a world shocked by a pandemic, with national health systems and international organizations in the eye of the storm, the public debate on health must maintain a critical and scientific outlook rather than responding to individual political interests. We hope that this contribution, which condenses the information available, in some cases making data available to the Spanish-speaking public for the first time, will allow us to advance in the direction of human progress.

By Franco Martín López, February 7, 2021

Report Authors

Franco M. López:

Is Executive Director of Fundación Internacional Bases (FIB) and Director of FIB’s Observatorio Urbano.

Santiago Remón:

Is a collaborator of the Fundación Internacional Bases (FIB).