Venezuela’s health care revolution

[bemildred]

In late August President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela announced a new stage in his country’s fight for health care. The government will spend $2.5 billion. “The first and most important use is to purchase necessary equipment, the most modern in the world,” said Chavez. “That’s Barrio Adentro III (‘Inside the neighborhood’): a hospital revolution.”

A revolution may be what’s necessary to make good on health care as a human right. As Fidel Castro declared in 1959, “The peasant’s children were allowed to die, because there were no medicines or doctors for them. Peasants’ wives were allowed to die because there was often neither medicine nor doctors for them. … In rescuing the peasants, the revolution is taking its first step toward making itself a true democracy, a democracy without slaves.”

Health care is very much on the agenda for democratic change unfolding in Venezuela. Utilizing Cuban doctors and expertise, plus oil money, Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution is on the road toward a new era in health services.

Venezuela’s poor, about 80 percent of the population, are probably better off than Cuban peasants were back in 1959. Theoretically, two-thirds of the Venezuelans have access to health services under social security, and Venezuelan infant mortality rates and life expectancy are better than those of many other Latin American nations.

Info from the Commies

[tatertop]

1. Chavez does it again

The right thing for the majority of the people.

[hiabrill]

2. We'll soon be learning from his example....

..... It's shameful (in this day and age) when health care cannot be provided for all...