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From Cooperation to Capacitation: Cuban Medical Internationalism in the South Pacific
Abstract
This article analyses Cuba's medical missions in the South Pacific and specifically in Timor-Leste (East Timor), the largest outside of Latin America. Here, the adaptation of Cuba's low-technology and low-resourced preventive-focused medical model (based on the development of human capital) is used to highlight lessons regarding effective medical cooperation. This article finds that these lessons should be drawn from the dynamic and creative adaptations of the Cuban medical model, which are assisting South Pacific medical systems by scaling up primary care workforces to target previously underserved areas. Thus, the contribution of Cuban medical personnel, bolstered by the education of indigenous South Pacific students (trained by Cuban professors, both in Havana and locally) has developed into unique medical models for South Pacific nations. Such models of cooperation are also clearly adaptable elsewhere.
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Notes
In a statement on 11 June 2012 by Ambassador Oscar León González during the United Nations Plenary Meeting on the Implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in New York, he highlighted that there are ‘currently 38,868 healthcare professionals, including 15,407 medical doctors, who are rendering their services in 66 nations. Over 14,000 students from 122 countries have graduated from the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM)’ (León González 2012).
For Haiti, where Havana has a large medical programme, this meant that 75 per cent of the students trained in Cuba were drawn from communities and areas previously underserved by medical personnel ‘including a broad representation of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples’ (Bull World Health Organ 2010: 325).
More details, including videoed interviews of Timorese medical students, can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLmUIGdYjE&feature=plcp, as well as other students from the South Pacific at ELAM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhMAncnEDQQ&feature=plcp) can be found at Tim Anderson's YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/timand2037/videos?sort=dd&flow=grid&view=0&page=2).