Author’s note In 1999, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed a measure to assess the ability of a National Health System (NHS) to translate expenditures into health outcomes called the “index of performance or efficiency on the level of health” (IELH). Health expenses per capita, disability-adjusted life expectancy (DALE), effectiveness of the NHS, and education […]
Cuba-United States Academic Exchanges: Personal Experiences in the Health Sector in Cuba 1962–2009 and in the United States
Notes[ref]I thank my wife María Espinosa for her support in the revision of the paper; María Werlau, Head the Cuba Archives, and Carlos A. Montaner’s panel “The Work of Cuba with the Academic World and the Intelligentsia in the U.,” for their kind comments; and Kent Bream, Francis Coughlin, and Sherri Porcelain for opening to the […]
Cuba’s Long Tradition of Health Care Policies: Implications for Cuba and Other Nations
Notes1 In the late 1960s, at the same time that Cuba’s economy was struggling under the burden of the chaotic “10 Million Ton Sugar Cane Harvest” campaign, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (SOPH) was writing about the extraordinary results of “supposedly original” health care policies implemented by the Cuban revolutionary […]
Access to Human Health, Freedoms and Other Standards of Living Development in Cuba
Notes1 The World Health Organization (WHO)’s definition of health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not only the absence of disease or infirmity,”2 embraces basically the same principles associated with human rights and development, since all three seek to improve both the human condition and the fulfillment of the human […]
Demystifying the Cuban Health System: An Insider’s View
Notes1 The World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948 defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”2 Henry Sigerist, in his monumental work on the history of medicine, could never grasp the obscure ideological goal of Soviet totalitarian universal primary health care, with […]