[Sust-mar] A WORLD OF FRIENDSHIP: CUBA'S INTERNATIONALISM IN A TIME OF GLOBAL CONFLICT

[Isaac Saney]

A WORLD OF FRIENDSHIP: CUBA'S INTERNATIONALISM IN A TIME OF GLOBAL CONFLICT

7PM, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2
ROOM 204, DALHOUSIE LAW SCHOOL
6061 UNIVERSITY AVENUE

A FREE PUBLIC FILM SCREENING of the acclaimed documentary ¡SALUD! with a presentation by Basilio Gutiérrez, Vice-President of ICAP (Instituto Cubano de Amistad Con Los Pueblos - Cuban Institute For Friendship With the Peoples). ICAP is a major Cuban organization that was founded in 1960 in order to consolidate and build ties of solidarity and cooperation between the peoples of the world.

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¡SALUD! looks at the curious case of Cuba, a cash strapped country with what the BBC calls one of the world's best health systems. From the shores of Africa to the Americas, ¡SALUD! hits the road with some of the 28,000 Cuban health professionals serving in 68 countries, and explores the hearts and minds of international medical students in Cuba -- now numbering 30,000, including nearly 100 from the USA.  Their stories plus testimony from experts around the world bring home the competing agendas that mark the battle for global health and the complex realities confronting the movement to make healthcare everyone's birth right.

Against the alarming backdrop of the global health crisis and deteriorating public health systems in even the richest nations, ¡Salud! tells the little-known story of Cuba:  a poor country overcoming its lack of resources to provide universal health care and help other developing nations do the same.

A feature documentary, ¡SALUD! is directed by Academy Award nominee Connie Field and co-produced by Gail Reed.  The film spans three continents to look at the philosophy and health professionals placing Cuba on the map in the worldwide movement to make health care a global birthright.  Today, Cubans are among the world's healthiest people, despite the island's poverty.
Cuba's volunteer corps now posts 28,000 health professionals in 68 countries; and Cuban medical schools will graduate an unprecedented 100,000 new doctors from developing countries over the next decade.

The film's cameras reach into The Gambia, rural South Africa, coastal villages of Honduras and river settlements in the Amazon, where a Cuban is often the first doctor a poor community has ever seen. In some nations they staff entire health systems.  In all, they take with them the experience and philosophy of their own community-oriented, preventive and universal health care model fundamentally at odds with a global wave of healthcare privatization.

¡SALUD! questions what propels Cuban doctors to serve where most others won't, and grapples with the tensions their presence sometimes provokes.

¡SALUD! probes the competing agendas that mark the battle for global health. The film opens in a South Africa freed from apartheid, but bound by its social and economic legacy.  The challenge:  provide health care for the country's majority for the first time in history.  One problem:  a massive brain drain of qualified health professionals.  One decision:  turn to Cuba for doctors and medical educators.  Explains former Director General of Health, Dr. Ayanda Ntsaluba:  "Cuba shared our philosophy of health equity, prevention-oriented care and training doctors for public service."

In Venezuela, the film takes viewers into barrios on Caracas hillsides and deep into the Amazon, where the largest contingent of Cuban health professionals now works, focusing on their role in a country undergoing dramatic change.

In Honduras, Cubans' service in poor, indigenous communities pits the public against the country's medical establishment, ensnaring in the dispute a government already straining under healthcare budget cuts mandated by the IMF.

By contrast, in The Gambia one of the world's smallest, poorest nations, we find government taking the lead to bring health care to all.   Over 100 Cuban doctors join local health workers at new clinics and hospitals across the country.  Comments Dr. Yankuba Kassama, The Gambia's Minister of Health: "Our infant mortality is down, life expectancy up.  We wouldn't be able to narrate this success story without the help of the Cubans."

Cubans can't stay abroad forever:  home-grown doctors are needed with a commitment to serve the underserved.  ¡SALUD! offers a rare glimpse into the Latin American Medical School (ELAM) in Havana, now the largest medical school in the world.  There, 12,000 low-income students from 27 countries, including nearly 100 from the USA, receive a free medical education in exchange for pledging to return to poor communities when they graduate. Students share their dreams and concerns about a world where values learned in their training are not always rewarded.

Through the Cuban experience, the film challenges us to reflect on the larger questions:  What will it take to stop disease from decimating poor countries and reaching around the globe?  How can we get enough doctors and health workers to where they are needed most?   Do governments have a responsibility for the health of their citizens?

In today's world, shouldn't every person be born with the right to a healthy chance at life?
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REVIEWS OF ¡SALUD!

"Those interested in the realities of Cuba's health care progress and the many lessons we can learn can skip the Michael Moore film and instead see ¡SALUD!"
Steven Clemons, Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation&
Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com

"¡SALUD! is a great movie that should inform our nation's urgent quest to raise health standards for all citizens."
William D. Rogers, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American
Affairs

"¡SALUD! is an excellent, accurate and deeply moving portrayal of a healthcare system designed to keep people healthy rather than the 'sickcare' system that currently exists in the United States."
Joycelyn Elders, MD, former U.S. Surgeon General

"¡SALUD! demonstrates how a poor small island state can impact health around the world.  The Cuban medical brigades offer more than clinical skills to the developing countries.  They bring health to the underserved who might otherwise not survive and more importantly, they bring hope for change in health care systems to make health accessible to all.   Cuba has made the health of the people an indicator of the country's performance for development.  ¡SALUD! also presents a compelling example of south-south cooperation that has strengthened friendship and solidarity among peoples and countries."
Mirta Roses, MD, Director, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)

"For anyone interested in health and social justice, ¡SALUD! is indispensable to understanding the Cuban model -- what has been accomplished with very limited resources and the transformative potential of construing health as a fundamental human right and a matter of basic human dignity."
Alicia Yamin, JD, MPH, Physicians for Human Rights

"I salute ¡SALUD! for teaching us how much we can learn not just about - but from - Cuba."
Julian Bond, Chairman of the Board
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

"If you need to be inspired, ¡SALUD! is a movie for you. This story of thousands of Cuban doctors and other healthcare professionals volunteering in dozens of countries around the world to deliver care to those in need is a tremendous lesson in human solidarity. Imagine what a different world this would be if instead of 2.5 million soldiers in 125 countries, we sent 2.5 million doctors, nurses and other caregivers. Every healthcare worker should see this film and smile."
Dennis Rivera, President
SEIU Healthcare

"¡SALUD! shows us that, regardless of economic constraints, health for all is possible when government intelligently applies basic principles and makes a healthy citizenry a top priority."
Georges Benjamin, MD, FACP, Executive Director
American Public Health Association (APHA)

"¡SALUD! is just the kind of the film we want to showcase in our festival."
Ayuko Babu, Executive Director
Pan African Film Festival (PAFF), Los Angeles
On presenting ¡Salud! the Audience Choice Award

"¡SALUD! shows what is possible if the priorities are right in your society."
Assemblywoman Karen Bass, 47th District
Majority Leader, California State Assembly

"¡SALUD! should be required viewing for all medical students -- it provides the fresh and inspiring perspectives on healthcare delivery and medical education that are desperately needed in the current climate of medicine at large."
Jay Bhatt, National President 2006 - 2007, American Medical Students Association

"¡SALUD! is compelling, upbeat and moving, a great tool for learning the much there is to learn from Cuba."
Paul Farmer, MD, Partners in Health and Harvard Medical School

"¡SALUD! is a powerful film whose time has come. It's essential to those seriously working for a national health insurance program in the United States: it shows what is possible when the focus is the patient, not profits."
Quentin Young, MD, National Coordinator
Physicians for a National Health Program

"¡SALUD!  is moving testimony of what international solidarity and good will can do.  I look forward to using this powerful educational tool in my history
classes."
Félix Masud-Piloto, PhD
Professor of History &
Director, Center for Latino Research, DePaul University, Chicago

"Even if you've never heard of the advanced medicine and commitment to universal healthcare of the Cuban medical system, you will be awed and inspired when you see ¡SALUD! I was particularly thrilled by the commitment of the Cuban doctors to the poorest of the poor all over the world."
Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW

"¡SALUD!  is at once an emotionally powerful, informative and entertaining film that shows how seriously Cuba puts into practice the moral value of healthcare as a human right.  The film will provide important food for thought among audiences interested in religion, ethics and building a more humane world."
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, Director of Religion, Chautauqua Institution

"The film ¡SALUD!  provides an invaluable perspective on the Cuban health system demonstrating its success in providing primary care and a focus on community health. With predictions of a future shortage of primary care providers in the United States, viewing ¡Salud! is a must for those who are interested in improving access to health services."
Lloyd Novick, MD, President
Association of Prevention Teaching and Research
(formerly the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine)

"¡SALUD! lets audiences in on the unknown story of how Cuba is becoming a global health leader because of its peculiar ability to develop the health professionals and public health infrastructure so desperately needed in the world today."
Patricia W. Wahl, PhD, Dean
School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington

"¡SALUD!  tells the story of how Cuba is providing a new breed of public health physician to bridge the appalling gap in health equity worldwide."
Andres-Jacques Neusy, MD, MPH, New York University Medical School,
Global Health Education Consortium governing council

"¡SALUD!  brings forward the most salient issues in global health today and successfully reveals that the right to health is urgent and inescapable."
Arachu Castro, PhD, MPH, Harvard Medical School

"Watch ¡SALUD! and you'll be in awe of what a small, poor country can do to alleviate suffering all over the world. The love and care that Cuban-trained doctors are giving to poor patients from South Africa to Venezuela and The Gambia is a lasting legacy to the life affirming values of the Cuban government and its people."
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange

"All I can say is wow! ¡SALUD!  is a terrific and tremendously useful film. How can the business of medicine not hang its head in shame for its showing in the world of health care delivery?   ¡Salud! shows the breadth of Cuba's care and outreach.  Cuban doctors go to countries where they could leave and become rich, but instead they choose the wealth and beauty of caring for others, and that's an example and a direction for all medicine."
Patch Adams, MD

"Cuba established a highly regarded universal health care system decades ago, and has provided medical assistance and medical education to the less privileged in developing countries since the early 1960s. ¡SALUD!  shows us the latest chapter in this incredible story."
Julie Feinsilver, Ph.D.
Author of Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad

"¡SALUD!  should been seen by everyone from our political leaders to students in high schools and colleges who will shape the world of the future. We need to acknowledge that a country with the population of Ohio--only 90 miles from our borders--has evolved a system that rivals ours in terms of longevity, literacy, infant mortality and care for the chronically ill; and at a fraction of the cost. Surely there is a message here!"
Robert S. Blacklow MD
Visiting Professor Social Medicine Harvard Medical School
President and Dean Emeritus,
Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUC

"Cuba was a natural for us. They shared our philosophy of health equity, prevention-oriented care and training doctors for public service."
Ayanda Ntsaluba, MD
South Africa's Former Director General of Health
Current Director General, Foreign Relations

"Of all the so-called developing nations, Cuba has by far the best health system.  And their outreach program to other countries is unequaled anywhere."
Former President Jimmy Carter in ¡SALUD! 



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