From Cuba: Lessons in Health Care

On the newsstand Tuesday, March 29th, the Daily Hampshire Gazette's HEALTH TUESDAY section featured a report on what one writer, Dr. Jonathan Klate, thinks we can learn from the health care system in Cuba.

Integration of holistic methods with standard practices is common in Cuba.

Here are some additional photographs that accompanied the story, but that didn't make the print edition:

A physical therapy room at a policlinic in Managua, east of Havana on the north coast.

Dr. Carlotta Willis, professor of Mental Health Counseling at Antioch University in Keene, NH, who speaks Spanish well, is befriended by a street sweeper in Havana. Conversations such as this with people in many walks of life confirmed the information received from formal spokespersons from the government that health care is indeed free and readily available to all.

Dr. Jonathan Klate, licensed acupuncturist, explains the acupuncture treatment techniques observed in a clinic outside Havana to physician colleagues in the research group.

Dr. Willis with our cab drive, with his 1956 Desoto with over a million kilometres on it. (See caption for 1st photo)

Dr. Klate at the desk of deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista in the former Presidential Palace, now the Museum of the Revolution.

On the campus of one of the major Havana hospitals we visited there are three hotels to accommodate foreigners from may countries who come to Cuba to avail themselves of major surgery at high quality and low cost, or no cost at all to those from poor countries.

In a pediatric orthopedic surgery ward for children having major corrective surgery which as is the case with all medical services is available free of any cost.

A primary care doctor and staff at a street side office in old Havana.

A primary care doctor explains the procedures for walk-in urgent care at a local clinic.

A policlinic in Managua.

Dr. Jonathan Klate confers with a counterpart, a senior acupuncture practitioner in the primary clinic for natural and traditional medicine in Havana.

Psychologist Dr. Carlotta Willis of Amherst confers with a Cuba colleague.