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ISSN 1527-3172 (Electronic)

2019, Number 4

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MEDICC Review 2019; 21 (4)

Six decades of cuban global health cooperation

Gorry C

Language: English
References: 29
Page: 83-92
PDF size: 2146.88 Kb.


Text Extraction

In 1978, the world was put on notice: health inequalities exacerbated by lack of access to essential services was a ticking time bomb threatening social and economic development everywhere. That year, over 100 countries signed on to the Declaration of Alma-Ata, which affirmed that “health . . . a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, is a fundamental human right.” To guarantee this right, governments were urged to prioritize the provision of quality, continuous, comprehensive and affordable primary care for their entire populations by the year 2000.
Forty years after Alma-Ata, many countries have failed unequivocally to attain that goal. In 2017, the World Bank and WHO released sobering data that nearly half the world’s population was still without essential health services. Meanwhile, the cost of those services—when accessible—had already pushed nearly 100 million people into extreme poverty.
This dire state of affairs is not limited to developing countries. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the USA will be short 21,000–55,000 primary care physicians by 2032 and recent data are not encouraging: the percentage of fourth-year medical students filling primary care positions in the 2019 US National Residency Matching program was the lowest on record. Furthermore, access to a primary care physician for US patients has remained flat—76.4% in 2015 compared to 76.8% in 1996—despite evidence that “access to primary care improves health outcomes and lowers health-care costs.”


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