Havana's Operation Miracle helps eye patients see light

Havana's Operation Miracle helps eye patients see light
TOM FAWTHROP
IN HAVANA

THE upmarket tourists and their luxury yachts that once swarmed the idyllic Marina Hemingway complex in Havana now find everything is booked out for months ahead. More than a dozen Havana hotels have been temporarily closed to tourists.

The reason is not a political crisis but a massive influx of a different kind of visitor to Cuba as Venezuela's petro-dollars fund "Op<aeration Miracle" - a remarkable undertaking to take planeloads of the poor to Cuba for eye-surgery.

"I can see again," shouted a headline in the Jamaican Gleaner, a newspaper which carried an accompanying story about 23 poor patients from Jamaica who had just returned from successful eye operations in Cuba.

Jamaican Raymond Sterling, was elated just after his cataract was removed. "After going there [Cuba], I could see again like before," he said. "Everything was like heaven."

Since July 25, more than 3,000 people from ten Caribbean countries have had eye operations in Cuba funded by oil-rich Venezuela. Other patients from Central and South America bring the total to 100,000 free eye operations this year.

Elinor Sherlock, Jamaica's ambassador to Cuba, is impressed. "Over 500 Jamaicans have come here, some of them were blind, all of them poor. Now you see them staring with awe after the operation ...they can see again. Operation Miracle really is a miracle."

The brainchild of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro, this extraordinary humanitarian programme is offering free treatment to an estimated 4.5 million people suffering from eye-afflictions in Latin America and the Caribbean region over a ten-year period.

With its ramshackle third world economy, Cuba appears to be an unlikely rival to rich western nations in medical prowess and humanitarian aid.

But one of Castro's most respected achievements is the establishment of a comprehensive health system producing one doctor for every 170 people, compared to 188 in the US and 250 in the UK. Teams of Cuban doctors assess applicants for eye surgery before sending patients to Havana on special flights from ten Caribbean countries and more than 15 Latin American nations. On August 20, Cuba achieved what is almost certainly a world record - performing 1,648 eye operations at 20 hospitals in a single day.

Cuban eye surgeons are normally paid about 25 euros a month by the state, but five tourist hotels have been put at their disposal to ensure more comfort and facilities than they would get in their own homes.

All flights, accommodation and food are funded by the Venezuelan government as a result of various trade agreements. Cuba has been paying for vital shipments of 90,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil a day by helping President Chavez establish a free national health service in his country with the aid of 17,000 Cuban health professionals.

Under this agreement all Venezuelans - not only eye-patients - get free medical treatment in Havana's hospitals as part-payment for oil.

Cuba fields medical teams in 69 developing countries including 200 doctors and nurses in Pakistan's earthquake zone, and Castro offered to send the Henry Reeve Brigade of 1,500 doctors to aid Hurricane Katrina victims, an offer that was not taken up by the US government.

If more doctors and hospitals can be found outside Cuba, "Operation Miracle" will expand to 500,000 operations a year in 2006.

The article: http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=2305142005

 

a story of inspiration. if only america and its "allies" could get on this track maybe the world would be a different place.

 

I just saw Weird Al's 'Like a Surgeon' video the other day where he was using the forceps to take hundred dollar bills out of the patient's wallet.

.

 

Havana's Operation Police State keeps dissenters locked up



Give me a break, Guy, it is really news to you that the US has aid programs too?

 

american aid
first drop the bombs
then bring the bandages

 

Beats the alternative of first dropping the bombs and then bringing the guns.
And most of our foreign aid goes to Israel and Egypt, both of which i believe we've never been at war with.

 

The U.S. spends about 5 billion a year on Egypt and Israel combined. They accounted for most of the foreign aid until the Iraq/Afghanistan campaign. The U.S. has gone through about $350 billion on the terror campaign in a few years, most of it on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. spends about 35 billion a year on domestic social welfare programs.

.

 

You mean drop packages of pop tarts and peanut butter to Mideastern people with hispanic writing on them (leftover food packs given to illegal Mexican immigrants stuck in the desert on their way to the U.S.) in yellow packages that look like cluster bombs that were dropped right before that.

.

 

Hispanic writing? They have a name for it. Its called Spanish.

And as much fun as it is to sneer at US aid, $15 billion for AIDS prevention and treatment is not food packages with "hispanic writing" dropped from airplanes.

Its hilarious to see people have brain meltdowns as they try to find a way to hate America's aid programs. Meanwhile Cuban propaganda gets swallowed whole.

 

Pentagon blunders have a way of getting people upset. Don't blame me; blame the Pentagon. Fiction writers can't even come up with blunders that bad.

It's a good thing the Pentagon isn't controlling things like domestic welfare and AIDS prevention. We can't afford many more Pentagon brain meltdowns.

.

 

Yeah, because.. The Cubans, they are the bad guys.. Cubans, evildoers... Evil childeaters... Evil terrorists.... So we shouldn't trust 'em. Let me tell you a little story...

They gave the enemy weapons and trained terrorists, they invaded our nation, they used biological weapons against us, blowing up our resturants and hotels and sugar cane fields, they tried to kill our leaders hundreds of times, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not... "They", are the United States and the Quislings in Florida.

 

Honey, this is politics, they are all bad guys, it's just a matter of degree (which in turn depends on the person's perspective).

And to the poster 2 up.
YOu only hear about the CIA mistakes, not their successes.

 

"Dude", it's not just politics. In fact, I'm not sure it's "politics" at all.

It is a nation's struggle for independence. It is Cuba's struggle for independence, vs. those who want Cuba to go 50 years back in time, when Cuba was a colony of the U.S.

 

You hear about both. It's just that people don't like to talk about the blunders. It's an issue that's not peculiar to the CIA.

.

 

No, you don't. Anytime the CIA successfully instigates a revolution or a rebellion against a hostile foreign government, it's usually portrayed as being organic and home grown.
But it probably isn't.
Did the CIA have anything to do with the Orange revolution in Ukraine, or the one in LEbanon? Probably, but they aint' saying cause it would compromise their actions.

 

Sure you hear about them. They're simply interpretated differently when things go the way the CIA wanted them to.

An example is the CIA working with terrorist groups in Afghanistan in the 80s. People knew that was going on. Another would be the CIA working with the Northern Alliance in Aghanistan to try to overthrow the Taliban.

At the time, the CIA's involvement with groups in Afghanistan in the 80s seemed like a good idea and a success. It came back later to haunt the U.S., though.

My reference wasn't limited to the CIA. I was talking about the govt in general, but somehow you want to narrow this to the CIA. There are CIA blunders we don't hear about also. It sounds like you want to narrow this to the CIA to try to blur the debate. There's things the CIA does that we will never know about and therefore could never have a meaningful debate about.

.

 

One of the biggest problems is that the U.S. government has people socialized to support it no matter what the govt is doing. That takes away all acountability of govt officials, and they love it. What could be better than to have the American public defending you know matter what you do. It makes the govt a police force answerable only to itself. Look at how many people today claim that someone who is being critical of govt policy is guilty of being anti-American.

It's a shame so many people go along with it. If people would simply question the govt on bad policy it would at least bring about some accountability. Ordinary citizens are held accountable every day by the law.

.

 

america will probably just end up as another stalinist state.