{"id":366302,"date":"2018-06-22T04:27:46","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T03:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/when-cuban-polyclinics-were-born\/"},"modified":"2018-06-22T04:27:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T03:27:46","slug":"when-cuban-polyclinics-were-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/when-cuban-polyclinics-were-born\/","title":{"rendered":"When Cuban Polyclinics Were Born"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>As discontent increases with overly expensive and totally inadequate US health care, it is time to look closely at the beginnings of the modern Cuban medical system.\u00a0 Like the US, Cuba had unintegrated, overlapping medical institutions that failed the poor, especially black, population of the island.\u00a0 Though several European countries have developed health care systems about 40% cheaper than the US, Cuba was able to craft health care which became more than 80% less costly than the US with a roughly equivalent life expectancy.<\/p>\n<p>When the revolutionary government took the reins in 1959, millions of Cubans went without medical care.\u00a0 The years 1959-1964 aimed at overcoming the crisis of care delivery as half of the island\u2019s physicians fled.\u00a0 During the second half of the decade (1964-1969) Cuba began redesigning medicine as a holistic system.\u00a0 It\u2019s created a model for poor countries that forever changed medicine.\u00a0 Cuba did so largely by putting the polyclinic at the center of care delivery.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Policl\u00ednico<\/strong><strong> Integral<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cpolyclinic\u201d (or \u201c<em>policl\u00ednico<\/em>\u201d in Spanish) generally refers to a medical facility offering outpatient services.\u00a0 In 1961, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) began a study to unify preventive and curative medicine. In May 1964, it opened the first <em>policl\u00ednico integral<\/em>.\u00a0 The next year, MINSAP spread the model throughout Cuba.<\/p>\n<p>Staff at the new polyclinics included at least a general practice physician, nurse,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/06\/when-cuban-polyclinics-were-born\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As discontent increases with overly expensive and totally inadequate US health care, it is time to look closely at the beginnings of the modern Cuban medical system.\u00a0 Like the US, Cuba had unintegrated, overlapping medical institutions that failed the poor, especially black, population of the island.\u00a0 Though several European countries have developed health care systems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-366302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}