Nearly a dozen doctors from Children’s Hospital Colorado who recently traveled to Cuba said they found a health-care system that caters better to prenatal needs than our own.
Yet despite an infant-mortality rate that is far lower than in the United States — 4.2 per 1,000 compared to 6 — Cuban physicians are so poorly paid that they often take on work in the tourism industry to get by.
“It’s a real problem,” said Dr. Stephen Berman, a former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics who is at Children’s and the University of Colorado. “The tourist industry is their number-one source of revenue.”
Although the island-nation’s hospital infrastructure suffers, its universal health-care system ensures a stronger emphasis on prevention, primary and ambulatory care, Berman said.
“They’ve been able to organize a very impressive primary-care program,” he said. “So instead of limiting the number of doctors, they’ve got three times the ratio that we do.”
In Cuba, he said, there are 76.6 doctors for every 10,000 people. The U.S. has 24.5, Berman said. That’s about one Cuban doctor for every 300 families.
The national delegation of pediatricians traveled to Cuba for the first-ever collaboration between doctors wanting to improve child health in each country.
The nine-day trip featured interactions that brought a better understanding of how each country approaches health care.
“They are diametrically opposed,” Berman said of the U.S. and Cuban systems. “Ours is based on a business model, of free-enterprise, making the latest in equipment available to hospitals that in turn compete for patients.”
The Cuban system focuses on prevention, paying more than 66,000 doctors a meager $60 per month. Hospitals suffer.
“If you’re sick in Cuba and need to go to a hospital, you’re in big trouble,” Berman said. “But there’s a lot we can learn from them in terms of reducing prematurity rates, health education and having the proper resources.”
The coalition of 13 doctors, 10 of them from Children’s, met their counterparts in Havana and discussed progress each has made in the areas of newborn care, chronic health conditions among children and early childhood development.
Diplomatic relations were restored with Cuba in July, ending an isolation that began in 1961, during the Cold War. A commercial, economic and financial embargo, however, remains in effect until its dissolution is approved by Congress.
The trip was sponsored jointly by the Cuban Pediatric Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pan American Health Organization, Children’s Colorado, and the Center for Global Health at the Colorado School of Public Health at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.
“There’s a real opportunity for true collaboration,” Berman said Friday. “It has a great education system and if you let them, the Cubans would be very creative and entrepreneurial.”
Both sides promised to continue contact, though “we have to watch how things work out on a national level,” Berman said. “We’ve identified some equipment needs they have, with children’s hospitals as the target.”
David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or @davidmigoya