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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=2><SPAN
class=562264607-16072005></SPAN><STRONG>Vol. 69/No. 27
July 18, 2005</STRONG>
</FONT></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> <BR> <BR> <BR></FONT><B><FONT size=5><!-- Main headline --><FONT face="Times New Roman">Clinics operated by
Cuban doctors expand in Venezuela <BR></FONT></FONT></B><FONT
face="arial, helvetica" color=#999999 size=2>(front page)</FONT><BR><FONT
size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <BR><!-- Put text above here --></FONT></FONT><FONT
size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><B>BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS<BR>AND CARLOS
CORNEJO </B> <BR>VALENCIA, Venezuela—“We’ve now entered the second phase of
<I>Barrio Adentro</I>,” 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.”
</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<P>“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. </P>
<P>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. </P>
<P>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. </P>
<P>“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. </P>
<P>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.”
</P>
<P>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. </P>
<P>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. </P>
<P>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.” </P>
<P>Pantoja said up to 60 percent of medical visits across the country still take
place in hospitals, which are overcrowded and ill-equipped. </P>
<P>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.” </P>
<P>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.” </P>
<P>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. </P>
<P>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. </P>
<P>“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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