Venezuela's Medical Revolution: Can the Cuban Medical Model be Applied in Other Countries?
Date
2013-12-10
Authors
Walker, Christopher
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Abstract
This thesis analyzes the Cuban medical adaptation in Venezuela called Misión Barrio Adentro (MBA) and seeks to answer the question of whether MBA shows promise as a health system that improves medical accessibility for impoverished and marginalized populations. In many cases MBA succeeds by: utilizing a free universal health care system; locating health centres in previously underserved areas; providing medical education scholarships to populations from non-traditional backgrounds; creating a catchment system based on medical accessibility; scaling up the medical workforce to 60,000 community doctors by 2019; and broadening the very praxis of what health means in a Latin American social medicine approach. However, some challenges remain including issues of corruption, fragmentation, and polarization. Issues regarding internal and external migration of Misión Sucre-trained physicians remain to be comprehensively evaluated. However, the capacitation of non-traditional medical personnel, imbued with conciencia, is significant and could well become an important example for other countries.
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international development, human development, health care as a human right, Venezuela, Cuba, South-South cooperation, Mission Barrio Adentro, Mission Sucre, Latin American social medicine, Hugo Chávez, medical internationalism, structural violence, health care as a human right, medical education, preventive and proactive care, medical accessibility, community-oriented primary care, rural-urban health disparity, health in all policies, political will, transnationalization of policy learning, capacitation, soft policy tools, polarization, non-traditional medical backgrounds, marginalized populations, poverty, conciencia, bio-psycho-social spheres of health