Does Cuba Hold the Cure for America’s Doctor Shortage?

[Judi Lynn]

Does Cuba Hold the Cure for America’s Doctor Shortage?

by Mark Hay

Ever since Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced their intention to normalize relations between America and Cuba last December, the world has been abuzz with speculation as to what the long-awaited opening will bring the two nations. American businessmen and officials have already launched trade delegations to the island, exploring new import-export markets and avenues for development. But besides all the chatter about American tractor exports and Cuban cigar imports, one of the most exciting new deals has been a plan by a Buffalo, New York-based biotech firm to import, test, and distribute a Cuban lung cancer vaccine, Cimavax. Already widely used in countries with better economic relations to Havana, the drug (which is far cheaper and less toxic than chemotherapy) seems capable of extending the lives of critical patients by four to six months, buying them some much needed time.

The excitement over Cimavax is just the beginning of Cuba’s potential in the biomedical field. Thanks to its long isolation from major medical markets and intense poverty, the island nation has long prioritized innovation and technology. They currently hold about 1,200 international medical patents and market their goods to over 50 nations—Cuba is especially well known for its top-notch meningitis and hepatitis B vaccines, anti-tumor drugs, wound-healing accelerants, ulcer treatments, and cheap, non-invasive brain mapping procedures (used to treat patients in rural, poor clinics without access to bulky and expensive MRI machines). Imagine the potential of Cuban medical innovation, the popular narrative runs, when it gets an infusion of American cash and access to U.S. research facilities.

Yet while much hype has been focused on biomedical collaboration, there’s actually something far more basic, vital, and immediate that Cuba can offer the U.S. medical market. They have the power to potentially solve America’s chronic and growing doctor shortage, as they just happen to have a surplus of exactly the kind of doctors the United States needs, working in conditions similar to our most underserved and economically disadvantaged regions.

As of March 2015, an association of North American medical schools predicted that within a decade America would suffer from a deficit of 46,100 to 90,000 physicians. That’s actually better than their 2010 projection of a 130,600-doctor shortage by 2025, but it’s still a fairly grim assessment. This shortage already affects and will increasingly hurt poor and rural communities, where there’s not just a lack of specialists but also a lack of primary care physicians. Primary care doctors make up about a third of the US medical shortfall predictions, and are necessary to provide preventative treatment and offer regular check-ups to chronically ill or elderly patients. And as we’ve come to understand in the healthcare debates of recent years, failing to provide early and regular medical attention in such communities can have cascading effects of illness, poverty, and medical costs for already overburdened locales.

More:
http://magazine.good.is/articles/cuba-medicine-doctors-normalization-cimavax

[tech3149]

1. Amen!

One of the tough problems you deal with in a rural or poor area is the lack of primary care medical professionals. It further complicates the problem when you may have a serious or less known medical problem. Specialists are pretty much out of reach without a referral from primary care.
Most of my working life has been around the medical profession and I remember hearing that the AMA had some influence in the number of medical students admitted each year. The justification was to limit the talent pool to assure a "reasonable" compensation level. I could entirely understand that manner of thinking in a cut throat economic environment.

Dog forbid the government adopt policies that would expand the number of medical professionals, especially primary care and those that are willing to work in the under served communities.
I think we have more to learn from Cuba than they from us. I keep hoping against hope that more normalized relations aren't just a Trojan horse that leads to corruption and exploitation of a nation that has had to endure more than their fair share.

[drm604]

2. This can't be right.

Socialism causes shortages, not excesses!

And you can't possibly produce medical breakthroughs without a profit motive!

Hopefully this isn't needed, but...