"GENEVA, May 19 – The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch criticized the UN's election today of Cuba to chair the 67th World Health Assembly, with executive director Hillel Neuer saying the decision "wrongly hands a coveted propaganda victory to a dictatorship that imprisons journalists and brutalizes human rights defenders," and that it "enables Cuba to further perpetuate myths about a health system that is in fact crumbling, with desperate citizens reduced to asking tourists to bring them Aspirin and other basic medicines."
The consensus election today by 194 WHO member states chose the sole candidate, Cuban Health Minister Roberto Tomas Morales Ojeda.
"Why is the UN placing the world's health in the hands of a government that practices medical Apartheid, with privileged clinics for medical tourists, while its own impoverished citizens are denied Aspirin and other basic medicines, with public hospitals that deny their patients running water or working toilets?" asked Neuer.
State-sponsored media has already trumpeted the anticipated victory, saying "Cuba has been chosen in large part because of the results and impact of its health initiatives, within the country and internationally."
While the Cuban articles claimed the Castro regime has achieved numerous health milestones, experts and international observers say the health system is in disarray.
- "I haven't seen Aspirin in a Cuban store here for more than a year. If you have any pills in your purse, I'll take them. Even if they have passed their expiry date." (Castro's health care system is paid for through onerous taxation and cannot provide even basic drugs, National Post)
- According to Al Jazeera's Latin America editor and former CNN reporter Lucia Newman, "I saw many hospitals where there was often no running water, the toilets did not flush, and the risk of infections - by the hospital's own admission - was extremely high." Health workers “smuggle the medicine out of the hospitals.” ("The truths and tales of Cuban healthcare.")
- Doctors suffer lamentable working conditions. (Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D, published in Surgical Neurology 2004, http://www.haciendapub.com/articles/socialized-medicine-cuba-part-ii-doctor-diplomacy-sex-tourism-and-medical-apartheid).
- The country prioritizes healthcare for tourists instead of their own poor. (Source; http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/health-myth.htm.) The former chief neurosurgeon of Cuba lost her job for opposing this discrimination..............."
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