Are Cuban medics really competent?

THE EDITOR: Why is the Government assuming that the 250 specialist doctors it wants from Cuba are competent in their fields?

Cuba runs a closed education system wherein its doctors are certified by the same people who run the medical school and they do not subject themselves to international accreditation. This means examiners are incentivised to pass their students.

Moreover, the Cuban government has a vested interest in promoting its medical personnel, since doctors are the second most lucrative foreign exchange earner for the State.

This means the ordinary Cuban doctor is probably not more competent that a TT nurse and Cuba’s so-called specialists, at best, are probably equivalent to a local GP.

Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union did it come out that the communists had been falsifying their production and other statistics for decades in order to create the illusion of efficient socialism. There is no reason to believe that the communist regime in Cuba is any different.

ELTON SINGH, Couva

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"Are Cuban medics really competent?"

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