Skip to main content

Community Doctors - ELAM - Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine

Image
By
Have I mentioned that I am very proud of my country, Cuba? Probably, you guessed it from a different post. The latter was more about our cultural heritage, but there are other levels of our idiosyncrasy that make me really glad to be a Cuban. Some of these levels may be impossible to disentangle from politics, and in fact, they were (are?) boosted by it. I won't launch an ode to the System in Cuba, partially because I think it is full of important faults, but also because there are other objective realities beyond Ideology that one should be bold enough to confront as such. Cuba is well known for their doctors, their health care system, their participation in medical assistance missions around the globe (e.g., Haiti after the earthquake of 2010), as well as for their (free of charges) international school of Medicine for fellows willing to help poor communities back in their home countries. To grasp the essence of Cuban public health care system, you may consult certain indicators by means of the Gapminder toolkit (see Gapminder post), e.g., the comparative evolution of child mortality vs. income per person for Cuba and the US. 

Here you have a nice documentary on the "Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina" (ELAM), which hosts not only Latin Americans nowadays but lots of students with different nationalities, virtually from all around the world. I hope you find it interesting, and that it motivates some reflections since right now people is seeking for alternative and plural health care education.  


I finish with a script excerpt from the episode Human Error from House MD TV series. 

Chase: They were lost at sea for 3 days; maybe dehydration caused the kidney problems.

[Foreman is laughing at his emails, House walks in]

Cameron: And the double vision?

Chase: Concussion during the shipwreck.

Foreman: It all fits as long as these symptoms started when you think it started.

House: This would be a lot easier if we had her medical records. Any of you certified deep sea divers?

Chase: She's from a dirt poor country in the tropics, infectious disease and parasites are the most likely cause of unexplained pain, fever and skin rash, we might as well start there.

House: [takes off his cap and puts it on a model of a brain] If there's one thing Castro knows is how to look great in green. [he gives pointed looks in Foreman's direction but the duckling has his back to the rest of the room and doesn't seem to see] And if there are two things Castro knows is how to look great in green and train doctors. Even without the medical records, we can assume she was drowned in antibiotics before she risked drowning to see me.

Cameron: So what doesn't Castro know?

House: How to lay his hands on high-tech scanning equipment. [points to the list of symptoms on the board] Pain, double vision, point us towards the head. Cameron, get an MRI, see what's cooking in the old cabeza. [she goes out to do as asked] Chase, check out the husband.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slow science/publishing and educational system

By
Guys, I don't know if you already know about the ''Slow science movement'' or not, well this is a wiki definition for it: Slow science  is part of the broader  slow movement . It is based on the belief that  science  should be a slow, steady, methodical process, and that scientists should not be expected to provide "quick fixes" to society's problems. Slow science supports  curiosity -driven  scientific research  and opposes  performance targets . I'm personally interested in it if you remember Gabriel once we had a discussion on the waste of energy and resources to produce junk science and the fact that scientists are losing balance on looking into science.  Sometimes people do not know why they publish and for the sake of what?! it's become a tradition or kinda religion.  I'm most agreed with the directed scientific activities, slowly going ahead and touching the problem, whenever you can swallow the problem with...
8 comments
Read more

Of Beauty and Consolation

By
Van de Schoonheid en de Troost or Of Beauty and Consolation is Dutch TV program hosted by Wim Kayzer and broadcasted in 2000. There are several reasons for me to recomend this tv series. First of all I like the title very much. The title is in itself consoling, says that there is somewhere or somehow the possibility of consolation (that for some reason I feel the need). The second reason is the music of the beginning of each episode. Then, of course, the interviews themselves, since they are long enough and free enough to allow these brilliant people to show a little bit of their work, of their personality, of their idiosyncrasies. And probably the nicest thing of the series is the diversity of the people interviewed, scientists, writers, philosophers, painters, some incredibly shy, some the opposite, some believe in ghosts, most don't, all in all an interesting catalog of the human species. The tv series ends with a show in which they gather many of the guests to discuss the...
2 comments
Read more

Omar Khayyam; an outstanding intellectual

By
Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, philosopher, poet and astronomer born in 1048 in Nishapur (modern day Iran). He obtained his early education from a scholar named Sheikh Mohammad Mansuri and later from one of the most renowned scholars of khorasan province. Mathematical Works Khayyam’s most famous works include his highly influential mathematical treatise called ‘Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra’ which he completed in 1070. This treatise highlighted the basic algebraic principles that were ultimately shifted to Europe. He laid the foundation of the Pascal’s triangle with his work on triangular array of binomial coefficients. In 1077 another major work was written by Khayyam namely ‘Sharh ma ashkala min musadarat kitab Uqlidis’ meaning ‘Explanations of the Difficulties in the Postulates of Euclid ’. It was published in English as “On the Difficulties of Euclid’s Definitions. In this book he contributed to non-euclidean geometry even though this was no...
2 comments
Read more