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Primary heath care cornerstone of the national
health system
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Fidel attends inauguration of 9th International
Seminar
BY SILVIA BARTHELEMY—Granma daily staff
writer—
PRESIDENT Fidel Castro
participated in the 9th International Seminar on
Primary Heath Care (PHC) that is in session in
Havana’s International Conference Center.
During the opening of the event,
attended by more than 1,000 delegates from 21
countries, Dr. José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, member
of the Political Bureau and Cuban minister of
health, gave a master lecture in which he detailed
the country’s antecedents, development and current
situation of the PHC, the cornerstone and axis of
all the transformations that have taken place since
the Revolution in the national health system and
which constitutes a heritage for the poor.
“Our primary care,” Balaguer
emphasized, “is state, socialist, free, integral and
equitable; moreover, it is characterized by its
universal coverage, efficiency and accessibility,
and is based on a concept of solidarity and
internationalism.
The minister recalled that PHC in
Cuba has led to precedents in international public
health, given its innovative and futurist nature,
particularly with the implantation and development
of the family doctor care model that started in
1984.
When the first PHC seminar was
organized in 1986, he recalled, “our country had 600
family doctors and nurses, and today that figure has
multiplied.”
Balaguer set out the principal
gains of the Cuban PHC, the fruit of constant
improvements and interest on the part of the state
to raise the quality of life of the people. Among
them he highlighted the reduction of the infant
mortality rate (to date this year 5.2 per 1,000 live
births), the increase of the life expectancy rate to
75 years, the existence of more than 71,000 doctors
(of them 3,000 family practitioners) and health
cover extending to all rural areas.
At the present time and as part
of the Battle of Ideas and the new programs of the
Revolution, that system is in open improvement, with
the premise of attaining excellence in medical
attention and contributing more and more to the
wellbeing of our people, he noted.
Services to increase health
promotion, prevention, diagnosis and rehabilitation,
as well as the protection of specific populational
groups and approaches to health problems with the
appropriate technology at that level of are directed
at individuals, the family and the community.
Balaguer referred to the
humanist and internationalist essence of the Cuban
medicine. From 1973 to 2004 more than 70,000 Cuban
professionals have collaborated in 70 nations, and
3,000-plus health professionals from all over the
world have been trained on the island.
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