2003: 10,000 Cuban Doctors Transformed Venezuela’s Health Care System

In Libertador Municipality, home to about a million poor people, a survey of hillside barrio residents was conducted in 2002. Residents identified health care as their greatest concern- particularly the long time required to travel to hospitals during emergencies and the difficulty in obtaining medical treatment at night. [1] The drive to the nearest hospital took at least an hour. When there were traffic jams, many patients arrived at the hospitals already dead.[2] 

In January 2003, Freddy Bernal, Mayor of Libertador, began advertising positions for physicians to live and work in poor neighborhoods. Fifty Venezuelan physicians responded, but they declined to live in barrios citing security concerns. Recalling Cuban doctors who provided emergency care after mudslides in 1999 and remained as health care providers in some neighborhoods, Bernal initiated discussions with the Cuban Embassy that led to an agreement to bring in a group of Cuban physicians.[1] 

When the first 58 physicians arrived in April 2003, they were placed in homes and used the same space as a living area and examining room. Many residents reported that they were astonished that these doctors would live in poor neighborhoods.[1] The availability of 24-hour free medical care engendered widespread acceptance and other neighborhoods petitioned for Cuban doctors. By December 2003, the program was so popular that President Hugo Chavez expanded it nationally into: Mission Barrio Adentro (“into the neighborhoods”). 

Between April and December of 2003, over 10,000 Cuban physicians, dentists and ophthalmologists began providing primary health care and dispensing medications for poor Venezuelans in hundreds of barrios. In exchange, Venezuela provided Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil daily. Patients were seen at more than 6500 sites including  distinctive octagonal brick structures that housed the medical personnel on the second floor and the medical offices on the first floor. All services, medicines and treatments were free. 

In 2006, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) assembled an international team of experts to evaluate the activities of the Mission Adentro program during 2004-2005. The PAHO study reported:[3]

·        150,455,332 consultations were provided (40% of the consultations were home visits)

·        18,251 lives were saved (patients would have definitely died without the consultation)

·        769,604 pregnant women had prenatal checkups;872,624 infants under one year old were monitored

·        1,353,905 new cases of hypertension were diagnosed;312,576 new cases of diabetes were diagnosed

·        1,339,163 eyeglasses were provided

·       “After three years, it can be said that the Venezuelan population previously excluded from the health care system now has access to comprehensive health care.”

  


1.      Briggs, C.L. and C. Mantini-Briggs, Confronting Health Disparities: Latin American Social Medicine in Venezuela, American Journal of Public Health, March 2009.

2.      Lancet, Cuban doctors provide care in Venezuela’s barrios, June 5, 2004

3.      PAHO, Mission Barrio Adentro: The Right to Health and Social Inclusion in Venezuela, July 2006.

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