Use the links below to find some interesting facts about these areas in Cuba...

Cuba's Health System

Cuba, although being considered a third world country by many Western Societies, enjoys some of the worlds best health outcomes.  Some of these include:

Abstract:  Cuba's accomplishments in primary care, while controversial, include several developments pertinent to family medicine.  These accomplishments involve low-technology and organizational innovations such as neighborhood-based family medicine as the focus of primary care; regionalized systems of hospital services and professional training; innovative public health initiatives and epidemiologic surveillance; universal access to services without substantial barriers related to race, social class, gender, and age; and active programs in alternative traditional treatments such as "green medicine" and "thermalism".  High-technology achievements include innovations in pharmacology and biotechnology, surgical procedures, and care of patients infected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).  Limited access to Cuban publications, impediments to presentations by Cuban health-care professionals at professional meetings, and the prohibition on importing products of Cuban biotechnology to the United States inhibit a detached, scientific appraisal of Cuba's accomplishments.  Cuba's isolation from the U.S. clinical and research communities has prevented interchanges that would improve primary care services in both countries.

To view the source and details of the above abstract, connect to

 http://www.cubasolidarity.net/waitzkin.html

WITHIN 5 YEARS THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY HOPES TO PRODUCE 90% OF MEDICINES      BY ANNE-MARIE GARCIA (SPECIAL FOR GRANMA INTERNATI0NAL)

Marcos Portal (Minister for Basic Industry) emphasized that, currently, the pharmaceutical industry produces 75% of medicines for domestic consumption, and the target for the next five years is 90%.

"The idea is to recover the $100 million USD we spend on medicines by exporting not only chemical, hemoderivative and cytostatic products, but also herbal medicines, among others."

In response to a question concerning the black market in medicines, he said that it reached a peak in the early '90s, when the island lacked some 300 different medications: "The black market will lose the opportunity to enrich itself at the cost of the people once the pharmacies have everything."  He confirmed that at present, "the pharmaceutical industry covers the existing 33 pharmacological groups," adding, "and of the 540 medications in production, the country currently guarantees 480."

He explained: "It has not been easy to compete on the foreign market because of rigorous certification processes for marketing any medicament."  He continued: "It would not be rational or serious to state that we're going to be able to sustain the sale of medicines in Cuba in the short term.  For that reason, "it has been decided that the raw materials for medicines should be purchased with the income from nickel, sugar and other export items."  But he confirmed that within a short period, the pharmaceutical industry will have the demand for medicines restored to normal.

He explained that in Cuba "some 260 medications are bought for use in hospitals, where they are most urgently needed."  Portal commented that the lack of medicines was not due to a lack of response from the pharmaceutical industry, but to financial limitations on the purchase of raw materials.

Cuba's Education System

Cuba's education system is one that provides free and equitable access to all who desire it.  This includes University education.

Cuba's Electoral and Political System

The following text is taken from the Cuban Foreign Ministry's webpage (http://www.cubaminrex.cu/index.htm) which, although not everything is in English, is a mine of information on the island, its policies and principles. It was translated by an unidentified supporter of Cuba to whom we are most grateful. For those of you in doubt as to whether Cuba has elections, the comments below should put your concerns at rest. It should be noted that many elected representatives in the National Assembly are NOT Party members. It should also be noted that with the 1898 victory against the Spanish came a US-imposed style of government identical to its own. Cuba therefore knows what it is talking about when it rejects Washington's style of corporate democracy. Finally, for those who say there is no possibility of expressing one's dissent in Cuba, blank or defaced ballots are considered to be acts of opposition against the government and are counted as such. Voting is secret, of course. The figures below will indicate just how low this opposition really is.

One of the fundamental pillars of the hostile campaign against our country, led by the United States, is to put in doubt the Cuban political and electoral system. The activity against Cuba regarding democracy and human rights is not only the principal tool of the United States in its efforts to legitimize its policy of hostility and aggression towards Cuba, but also furthers the interest of the principal industrialized capitalist countries seeking to impose upon the developing countries a model of political organization that would make it easier to dominate them.

In its campaign against Cuba, Washington tries to demonstrate the incompatibility of the political system - established by the island's Constitution - with internationally accepted norms regarding democracy and human rights, and to create the image of an intolerant society that does not permit the least diversity or political plurality. To this end, it employs powerful tools of propaganda and enormous resources which it uses for the recruitment, organization, and financing of tiny counter-revolutionary groups which it portrays as a "political opposition" both inside and outside the country.

The manipulation of the concept of democracy by the principal western powers has recently reached very dangerous levels. Countries that move away from the democratic model to which the great powers pay tribute, or the patterns and values they promote, are not only put in doubt and demonized through propaganda and the international institutions which control the so-called "defense of democracy," but are also converted into potential victims of the doctrine of intervention developed by the imperialist powers.
Cuba defends and supports the right of peoples to self-determination, recognized internationally as an inalienable right in the consensus reached in the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993. In the Declaration and Program of Action of Vienna it was established that "democracy is founded in the will of the people, freely expressed, to choose their own political, economic, social, and cultural system, and in their full participation in all aspects of life," and the importance of "national and regional differences as well as diverse historical, cultural, and religious legacies" is recognized.

Upon these principles, openly rejected by those who would impose their own models as unique, is built the Cuban political system, a model chosen and defended by Cubans themselves, truly homegrown and authentic, founded upon equality and solidarity between men and women, in independence, sovereignty, and social justice.

Our country has already experienced the model others wish to impose upon us. It has lived the sad experience of the "multi-party" and "representative" system prescribed for it by the United States, which brought it external dependence, corruption, illiteracy, poverty for large sectors of the population, and racism; in sum, the complete denial of the most elemental individual and collective rights, including the right to truly free and democratic elections.

This system and the permanent interventionist policy of the United States not only bred crooked and corrupt politicians, but brought tyrannical and murderous dictatorships, promoted and aided directly by Washington.

For all these reasons, the Cuban Revolution could not adopt such a system if it truly wished to resolve the ills inherited from it. Thus the country set about designing its own model, for which it searched among its own roots and resorted to the social, humanist, and patriotic philosophies of the most illustrious and eminent Cuban thinkers.

The first thing to stress, then, to explain the Cuban political system, is that our model is not imported, and never was a copy of the Soviet model nor of that which existed in the socialist countries at that time, as the enemies of the Revolution would have people believe. The Cuban political system was born from, and corresponds to, the historical evolution of the Cuban socio-political process, with its hits and its misses, its advances and its back-slides. The fact that the formation and development of the Cuban nation during its scarcely 130 years of existence has faced practically the same internal and external factors favored a coherent history, permitting the development of the idea of constructing a nation forged by the Cubans themselves.

The existence of a single party in the Cuban system is determined by historical and contemporary factors, among others. Our Party is the historical continuation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party founded by José Martí to unite the entire country with the object of achieving the absolute independence of Cuba. The factors that gave rise to that party - to liberate Cuba and impede its annexation by the United States - are the same which are present today as our people face an iron blockade, economic, commercial, and financial, as well as other hostile actions intended to unseat the government and destroy the system installed in the country by the sovereign decision of all Cubans.

Our Party works through persuasion, argument, and in close and permanent contact with the people, and the decisions it adopts are binding solely upon its members. It is not an electoral party, and it is prohibited, not only from nominating candidates, but also from participating at any time in the electoral process. This conception and practice guarantees that in a system with only one party, there can be developed and predominate the widest diversity of opinions.

Characteristics of the Cuban political and electoral system:

1. Universal, automatic, and free voter registration for all citizens with the right to vote, from 16 years of age.

2. Direct nomination of candidates by the voters themselves in public assemblies (in many countries the political parties nominate the candidates).

3. Non-existence of discriminatory, expensive, offensive, defamatory, and manipulated electoral campaigns.

4. Absolutely clean and transparent elections. The ballot boxes are guarded by school children and are sealed in the presence of the population, and the votes are counted in public, open to national and foreign press, diplomats, tourists, and everyone who wishes.

5. The requirement that election be by majority. A candidate is elected only upon receiving more than 50% of valid votes cast. If this result is not achieved in the first round, the two who have received the most votes will go to a second round.

6. The voting is free, equal, and secret. All Cuban citizens have the right to vote and to be elected. As there is no party list, votes are cast directly for the desired candidate.

7. All representative bodies of state power are elected and replaceable.

8. All elected officials must account for their actions.

9. All elected officials can be recalled at any time during their term.

10. Legislators are not professionals, and as such do not receive a salary.

11. A high rate of public participation in elections. In every election since 1976, more than 95% of those eligible have voted. In the last election for Deputies in 1998, 98.35% voted. 94.98% of the ballots cast were valid, 1.66% were annulled, and only 3.36% were blank.

12. Deputies to the National Assembly (Parliament) are elected for a term of 5 years.

13. The make-up of the Parliament is representative of the most diverse sectors of Cuban society.

14. One deputy is elected for every 20,000 inhabitants or fraction over 10,00. All municipal territories are represented in the National Assembly, and the nuclear base of the system, the electoral circumscription, actively participates in its composition. Every municipality will elect at least two deputies, and beyond that a number in proportion to the population. 50% of the deputies must be delegates of the electoral circumscriptions, and those delegates must live in the territory of that circumscription.

15. The National Assembly elects the Council of State and its president, who in turn is both Head of State and Head of Government. This means that the Head of Government must be elected twice: first by popular vote as a deputy, in free, direct, and secret vote, and then by the deputies, also in a free, direct, and secret vote.

16. As the National Assembly is the supreme organ of state power, and the legislative, executive, and judicial functions are subordinate to it, the Head of State and Government cannot dissolve it.

17. Legislative initiative is the privilege of multiple actors of society - not just the deputies, the Supreme Court, and the Attorney General, but also of workers', students', women's, and social organizations as well as the citizens themselves. In the latter case at least 10,000 citizens with the right to vote are needed for the exercise of any legislative initiative.

18. Laws are submitted to a majority vote of the deputies. What is specific to the Cuban method is that a law is not brought to a discussion of the full Assembly until such time - by means of repeated consultations with deputies, and taking into account the proposals they have made - as has been clearly demonstrated that there is majority consensus for its discussion and approval. The application of this concept acquires greater relevance when it involves the participation of the population, together with the deputies, in the analysis and discussion of strategic issues. In these occasions the Parliament moves to centres of labour, of students, and of campesinos, giving life to direct and participative democracy.

The above manifests the essence of Cuban democracy, of the system instituted, endorsed, and supported by the immense majority of Cubans.

However, we do not claim to have reached the development of a perfect democracy. The principal quality of the Cuban political system is its capacity for constant improvement with regard to the needs that arise for the realization of a full, true, and systematic participation of the people in the direction and control of society - which is the essence of every democracy.

Cuba's Industry, Agriculture and Economy

U.S. Blockade against Cuba

Guantanamo Bay

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