[Shef2venez] Clinics operated by Cuban doctors expand in Venezuela

[John Smith]

 HYPERLINK "http://www.themilitant.com/"www.themilitant.com
Vol. 69/No. 27           July 18, 2005  
 
 
Clinics operated by Cuban doctors expand in Venezuela 
(front page)
 
BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
AND CARLOS CORNEJO  
VALENCIA, Venezuela—“We’ve now entered the second phase of Barrio Adentro,”
said Joel Pantoja, a Venezuelan doctor here. “The neighborhood clinics where
some of us—and many more Cubans—offer medical care free of charge are being
supplemented with larger clinics. Those facilities have modern equipment and
the capacity to handle serious emergencies.” 

“Barrio Adentro” translates roughly as “Into the heart of the neighborhood.”
It is a government-sponsored program that has brought to Venezuela volunteer
Cuban doctors operating competent neighborhood clinics in working-class
districts and rural areas where workers and farmers have had little or no
access to health care. Their numbers have increased from approximately
10,000 doctors last year to 18,000 today. 

A small and growing number of Venezuelan doctors, most of them young, have
joined the program. “We are now about 1,800 around the country, compared to
none a year ago,” Pantoja said. 

Under Barrio Adentro II, larger popular clinics are being built. Most of
these, called Integrated Diagnostic Centers (CDI), offer emergency care,
including minor surgery. Modern equipment in well-built and air-conditioned
facilities allows advanced diagnosis and care. Laboratories and ambulances
are included. The government plans to build about 600 CDIs this year.
Integrated Rehabilitation Centers and advanced technology labs are also
being opened, for a total of 1,200 new clinics slated for completion this
year. The rehabilitation centers offer physical therapy and acupuncture, and
include a gym. 

“Health care and medicine are free for anyone who shows up,” said Olga
Grillo, a Cuban doctor on duty July 3 at the Canaima Integral Diagnostic
Center. “On average, we see 200 people a day.” All seven doctors there are
Cuban. The rest of the personnel are Venezuelans. 

One of the first to become operational around the country, the Canaima
clinic was inaugurated May 29. “We are supposed to serve about 40,000 people
in this area of south Valencia,” said Heriberto Colina, the clinic’s
administrator, referring to the mostly working-class area of the city, the
country’s third-largest. “So far, it’s mostly people from nearby
neighborhoods who come. But as our reputation spreads, we also see more
people from better-off areas.” 

The Canaima center is open 24/7 and has 16 beds. More than 90 such clinics
and rehabilitation centers are planned for Carabobo state, said Engelbert
Rodríguez, the Venezuelan doctor coordinating Barrio Adentro II in Valencia.
Seven have been completed so far. 

Enthusiasm among working people about the expansion of Barrio Adentro was
evident in Valencia and elsewhere. In the January 23 neighborhood of
Caracas, Luis Casadiego, who coordinates the program with the Cuban doctors
in the Montepiedad section, showed us plans for a local CDI. “We are
breaking ground next week,” he said. 

Ismael Machado, a retired worker there, said the most important thing is
that “Cuban doctors treat us like human beings.” Anticommunist prejudices
have faded, he said, despite a virulent campaign by many capitalists and
Venezuela’s Medical Federation to try to paint the Cuban doctors as coming
here to spread “totalitarianism,” not to save lives. “With the new medical
centers we rely even less on the hospitals.” 

Pantoja said up to 60 percent of medical visits across the country still
take place in hospitals, which are overcrowded and ill-equipped. 

Clinics like the April 19 primary care center in Valencia where Pantoja
works number nearly 10,000 across the country, he said. “We need double that
number and another 10,000 doctors involved. That's why we are trying to
recruit more Venezuelan doctors.” 

Pantoja said the government pays doctors like him $550 a month as an
incentive. This is three times the minimum wage, which most workers get, and
more than double the pay of Cuban doctors. Pantoja is being trained by
Norberto Galarraga, a Cuban doctor who lives on the premises. Like most such
centers, the April 19 clinic is a room in a private home, in this case, that
of Pascual Borrais, a retired textile worker. The government is building
neighborhood offices to create better facilities than those possible in
workers’ homes, Pantoja said. “But it’s going slow.” 

In mid-June, the government announced it will soon launch the third phase of
Barrio Adentro. This includes repairing and re-equipping the country’s 299
public hospitals and building new ones that would offer care like the
clinics operated by Cuban doctors. 

This won’t be easy, Pantoja said. There is strong opposition from many in
the capitalist class, including in the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), the
governing party. Carabobo’s new governor, an MVR member, he said, announced
steps this year to privatize the four public hospitals in the state. 

“He backed down after El Cimarrón and other groups organized a march of
1,000 in April to protest this plan,” Pantoja said. El Cimarrón is a group
Pantoja and others founded five years ago, while still in medical school,
that fought to bring Barrio Adentro to Valencia. “We’ve made progress,”
Pantoja said. “But we’re building a medical system parallel to private
medicine. We won’t resolve the contradictions as long as the wealthy control
the economy.”  


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