Health, politics and revolution in Cuba since 1898

ABSTRACT

It's surprising to learn in this ethnographic account by a US medical anthropologist that the Castro government has apparently been cooking the books. Hirschfeld's idealistic preconceptions dashed by 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality,' she observes a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights, with state-employed 'family doctors' responsible not only for health but also for exposing political dissent. The author, resorting to historical documents, concludes that the regime did foster public health gains after 1959, but concomitantly manipulated both health statistics and the impact of earlier US involvement in Cuba to highlight the 1959 revolution's alleged successes. A revealing and persuasive glimpse into public health under socialism. (AU)