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| Caribbean Property Magazine Home / June 2008 / 'Cuba's Operation Miracle' | SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND  |
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JUNE  2 0 0 8Issue 17
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CUBA’S OPERATION MIRACLE  The achievements of Operation Miracle was celebrated recently in Nicaragua, where an ophthalmologic clinic was opened in April with Cuban assistance and nearly 15,000 eye operations have been performed. And on May 15, 2008 Cuba and the nation of Antigua and Barbuda signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will serve as a legal framework for the free eye-surgery program Operation Miracle. The document was signed by Cuban Health Minister Ramon Balaguer and by Baldwin Spencer, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, who arrived in Havana on Monday for an official visit at the invitation of Cuban President Raul Castro. Speaking to ACN, Balaguer said that Spencer was particularly interested in the Cuban experience in the treatment of diabetes, a disease that is significantly affecting the people of Antigua and Barbuda. The PM also referred to non-communicable chronic diseases and spoke of a Centre for Integral Diagnosis donated by Cuba. He also expressed his interest in increasing cooperation in the training of nursing personnel from his country in Cuba. Patients from Antigua and Barbuda entered the program on July 22, 2005, and it has thus far returned sight to one in every 58 inhabitants of that Caribbean nation. Currently, 44 Cuban workers of the health sector make their contribution in Antigua and Barbuda, while 43 young people from the neighboring country study medicine in Cuba. Villazón where more Peruvians and Argentines respectively are treated than Bolivians. All are treated on the same terms: treatment is completely free. | ||||
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In January, in his state of the nation speech, Morales reported that in the previous 12 months Cuban doctors had attended 3,217,897 patients - more than one in three of the population - saving 4,179 lives in 4,664 non-eye operations. The Cubans sent 564 tons of medical supplies.  There are 1,766 Cuban health workers in Bolivia at the moment and another 300 doctors due to arrive later in the year. "At first I thought the Cubans were bringing their politics and would try to make our people into communists - though that would be a difficult process as no one wants communism here. But I've seen no evidence that this is happening. I'm glad they're here," he said. It was a much needed boost to the Bolivian health service where a small proportion of the working population had union-organized health insurance, some were rich enough to buy private health cover, while the rest had to rely on the pitifully inadequate state system. It is clear that the Cubans and Venezuelans are making a special aid effort for the recently installed Bolivian gover nment but Cuba's aid effort is worldwide. The EU can count on the impending Spanish gift of 700 ambulances to Bolivia to raise its profile here. But Venezuelan and Cuban aid is much bigger. Recently 47 working-class people from El Salvador, many of whom could barely see because they had thick cataracts in their eyes, arrived in Cuba at the top eye hospital. Among them were Francisca Antonia Guevara, 74, a homemaker from Ciudad Delgado whose world was a blur. She said she had visited an eye doctor in her home country but could not pay the $200 needed for artificial lens implants, much less pay for the surgery. “As someone of few resources, I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “With the bad economic situation we have there, how are we going to afford this?” Cuba’s economy is not exactly booming either, yet within two hours Ms. Guevara’s cataracts were excised and the lenses implanted, with the Cuban government paying for everything — including air transportation, housing, food and even the follow-up care. For the hundreds of thousands of people from Venezuela, Central America and the Caribbean who have benefited from this program since it was started in July 2004, Operation Miracle is aptly named. Yet the program is no simple humanitarian effort, and it has not come without a cost. The campaign against vision loss serves as a poignant advertisement for the benefits of Cuban socialism, as well as an ingenious way to export one of the few things the Cuban state-run economy produces in abundance — doctors. Cuban doctors abroad receive much better pay than in Cuba, along with other benefits from the state, like the right to buy a car and get a relatively luxurious house when they return. As a result, many of the finest physicians have taken posts abroad. The doctors and nurses left in Cuba are stretched thin and overworked, resulting in a decline in the quality of care for Cubans, some doctors and patients said. The Cuban authorities say they have also treated more than 750,000 people for eye conditions like cataracts and glaucoma since the program started. As noted Cuba has set up an enormous amount of small eye hospitals (37 in total) in Latin America, and the Caribbean. Twenty-five of the centers are in Venezuela and Bolivia, whose leaders have close ties to the Castros. The hospitals are staffed with more than 70 top-notch eye surgeons from Cuba and hundreds of other nurses and ophthalmologists. Dr. Reynaldo Rios Casas, the director of one of the Cuba eye institutes, said the first days of the program were hectic. Eye surgeons worked in three shifts, keeping the hospital’s operating rooms going all day and all night. It was not uncommon for a single surgeon to perform 40 operations in a shift. “It was really heroic,” he said. “We were operating day, afternoon and night.” Since then, Dr. Rios says his hospital has been training new eye doctors at an astounding rate of 2,100 this year, half of them surgeons. The hospital’s budget has been increased tenfold and its equipment upgraded. It now has 34 operating theaters with state-of-the-art equipment, including two outfitted for advanced laser surgery techniques. One advantage of the program is that it has given young surgeons a steady flow of patients on whom to hone their skills. Just this year, they have performed 394 cornea transplants at the hospital, he noted. “Our specialists have an incredible amount of experience,” he said. “What specialist in the world can do dozens of cornea transplants a year?” In recent years, the program has allowed Cuba to use its doctors as barter for subsidized Venezuelan oil and to forge closer relations with other countries in the region, including those, like El Salvador, that have not been historically close to the Communist regime here. Of course, the people who have their sight restored could not care less about the political and economic repercussions of the program. For them, the offer of free surgery is a dream come true. Mrs. Guevara, whose husband is a retired construction worker from San Salvador, said she had given up hope of seeing again. She heard about the Cuban project on a Mayan radio station. “I never imagined anyone would help me the way they have helped me,” she said as she waited for surgery. “I thought I was going to end up blind.”  Near her in the waiting room was Reina López, 58, of San Vicente, El Salvador, who has not been able to see for 13 years because of cataracts. Her daughter, Adilia Reyes, 33, said she had cared for her mother since she lost her sight. The family, including four children, survives on her father’s salary of $3 a day, plus whatever fruit can be sold at a market on Saturdays. “For the poor, this is a tremendous benefit,” she said, as she guided her mother to a pre-surgery test. “If it works, we’ll be so grateful.” Downstairs in the cafeteria, Manuel Agustín Isasi, 33, a professional fencing coach from Islas Margaritas in Venezuela, was eating a lunch of pork, rice and beans, able for the first time in years to see his food with both eyes. Three years ago, he had been whitewashing his home when he accidentally burned both corneas with a bucket of quicklime. The accident ended his fencing career. He had been one of the first to receive a cornea transplant in his left eye when the program started, he said. Then, in early November, doctors in Havana replaced the cornea in his right eye. He was unabashed in his praise for the Cuban government and for President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. “I would have remained completely blind,” he said, fixing a reporter with a swordsman’s gaze. “Vision is half of one’s life.” At least one million other people agree with him and can testify to the fact that miracles do exist. Author: Raquel B. Tejeda is a native of Mexico who works in the healthcare industry as a traveling private nurse within the Latin countries. | ||||
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According to a recent account by Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Eumilio Caballero
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