"A doctor implanted them during his guard duty," she told me, while proudly feeling her breasts through her blouse. Then she points to her rear end and pouts, "This didn't go so well for me, because the surgeon didn't have much practice." When I asked her where she got the silicone prostheses so obvious in her body, she told me she would only use "brand name" ones so she asked her Italian boyfriend to bring them to her. "The other part was easy, you know, you pay a doctor to do the operation." I confess that I am not very familiar with the matter; surgeons scare me and for years now I've gotten used to the awkward figure I see reflected in my mirror. But still I ask her for the details and she confirms what I'd sensed, the existence of an illegal network of plastic surgeons who practice in the same hospitals where they offer free care.
The practice took off in the late nineties and initially the main clients were hookers whose foreign boyfriends absorbed the costs. But now it's been extended to people of both sexes who have the resources to achieve the body of their dreams. Normally they go into the hospital with a false clinical history for some illness they don't actually suffer from, and within a few hours of coming out of the operating room they are sent home to recuperate. These surgical interventions aren't logged into the hospital records and a good share of the resources used are bought on the black market by the medical personnel themselves. Nothing should go wrong, because a complaint would expose the network involved. Discretion is fundamental and the patient is rarely followed up to see if there were adverse reactions. "We are all adults, so everyone is responsible for what happens," warned my friend's doctor before the anesthetic took effect.
At a price ranging between 750 and 900 Cuban convertible pesos (CUCs), breast implants are the most popular among the wide range of inserts implanted and of the clandestine operations performed. On sites like Revolico.com you can find a wide variety of sizes, with the most popular brands being Mentor and Femme. But you have to add "labor" to this price, which runs from 500 to 700 CUCs for a recognized specialist in these fields. Some beginners will also do it, for a little less, but the results leave much to be desired. For a Cuban surgeon whose salary barely reaches 30 CUCs a month, performing one of these operations is extremely tempting. However, they know the danger of being found out and that the risk of losing the right to practice medicine is very high. So they protect themselves in networks that almost always extend throughout the administration and leadership of the hospitals. These involve everyone from orderlies and aestheticians to nurses and public health officials. The worst thing that can happen is someone dying on the operating table; then they will have to invent some chronic disease to justify the casualty.
A few weeks ago the blogger Rebeca Monzó exposed one of these scandals of illegal surgery in a tweet*. The scenario in this case was Calixto Garcia Hospital, but it could have been any other operating theater in the city. Without specifying the details of what happened, there was talk of an entire clandestine room dedicated to foreign patients and Cubans who could pay for the operations. Popular rumor has it that it was all discovered when a tourist who had just been operated on hemorrhaged at the airport on her departure from Cuba, but this could be a complete myth. It is true, however, that like the rest of our reality, medicine exists on two planes, in two very different dimensions. One is that of patients who have no resources to offer gifts or payment to doctors, and the other is of those who can pay for the surgery on the spot, in cash. Material resources can shorten the time and increase the quality of any treatment, making sutures, x-rays and chemotherapy all appear on time.
It all starts with a gift of soap to the dentist who fills our cavities, and goes all the way up to a sterilized room where a foreigner can get an abortion, or a Cuban can receive a pair of breast implants.
*Translator's note: The tweet says, "Yesterday, Dr. Fonseca, the director of Calixto Garcia hospital, was led out of it handcuffed to the astonishment of all the personnel present." Dr. Fonseca and others at the hospital were arrested for illegally performing private plastic surgeries.
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanifromcuba
corruption?
Cuban hospitals?
Am I the only one who finds this article really, really strange?
For a relatively poor country their health care system performs slightly better than the U.S., one of the richest countries in the world (We actually rank far behind all of the industrial democracies in AVERAGE household income).
Cue the "USA, USA, USA" chants . . .
Yeah, that kind of foaming-at-the-mouth crazy is going to sell. Check the mirror and check out the foam, also check to see if your eyes are dilated.
http://www.memorialcubano.org/indexeng.htm
http://www.cubaverdad.net/genocide.htm#Other%20Sources:
Like many things there, they are a lie.
Cubans will confirm this. Ask them.
Translation to reality: On behalf of the Castro brothers, Eusebio Leal is using his official position as "Historian of Havana" to preferentially lease space in previously confiscated buildings in prime locations in Old Havana to five Castro loyalists (including Fidel's former chef).
Therefore, Castro's mafia can continue to enrich themselves.
It's called the piñata.
Despite its grave economic troubles, the Castro regime has more embassies throughout the world than any other Latin American nation.
That's because propaganda and intelligence-gathering are key to the regime.
In a ceremony, whereby the new Ambassadors swore an oath to the Castro regime, they were instructed by the Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Abelardo Moreno, that the function of a Cuban Ambassador is to "defend national security" and to "focus on spreading information about the rehabilitation of Cuba's economy and to confront all efforts to minimize its extent and depth."
In other words, their focus is to spread propaganda about Raul's so-called "reforms."
Similar to the recently revealed lobbying strategies of Syria's Assad, and Libya's Gaddafi before that, the smoke-screen of "reforms" is used to preserve the repressive apparatus of these regimes.
Sadly, Castro's Ambassadors are already being aided abroad by a handful of so-called Cuba "experts" and even a couple of Cuban-American businessmen.
A federal judge refused to stay a lawsuit in which three Cubans claim a shipyard on the island of Curacao virtually enslaved them to pay off Cuba's debt to the company.
In their 2006 lawsuit, the Cuban workers said they were kidnapped and trafficked to Curacao, where the Cuban government forced them and many others to work for Curacao Drydock in slave-like conditions on ships and oil platforms, for 112 hours a week. The men claimed they were never paid and worked for 15 years to satisfy a debt Cuba owed Curacao Drydock. They eventually escaped and made it to the United States.
After the workers sued the shipyard under the Alien Tort Statute and the RICO Act, Curacao Drydock unsuccessfully tried to move the case to Curacao. The company then abandoned its defense of the lawsuit and lost by default. The district court in Miami ordered Curacao Drydock to pay the plaintiffs $80 million
www.ascecuba.org
The Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (abbreviated ASCE) will hold its twenty second annual meeting under the theme "Where is Cuba Going?" on 2-4 August 2012 at the Hilton Miami Downtown Hotel in Miami, Florida 33132. This event represents the broadest gathering of academics, policymakers and profemssionals working on or researching the Cuban economy and society. Among the distinguished scholars and professionals expected to attend will be Professor Jorge I. Domínguez (Harvard University and ASCE) delivering the Betancourt Keynote Address. Scholars and civil society actors from Cuba, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and South America will also give presentations on the Cuban economy. For the Preliminary Conference Program, registration and hotel bookings, visit www.ascecuba.org.
A number of Havana doctors, nurses and others are under investigation for allegedly treating paying patients in public hospitals and running post-surgery recovery rooms in private homes, according to reports from Cuba.
Among those reported to have been interrogated by police are medical personnel from the Calixto García Hospital, built in the early 1900s near the University of Havana medical school, and the Workers’ Maternity Hospital.
The case highlights the growing reports of low paid Cuban medical personnel treating patients who pay under the table to receive better care than what they can receive from a deteriorated public health system — the island’s only legal alternative.
Cubans living in South Florida often pay in dollars to improve the care of relatives on the island, said Miami physician Julio Alfonso, or undergo medical procedures themselves during visits to the country to avoid the high costs of U.S. health care.
One exile living in the United States said his family paid $500 so that his father-in-law could recover after surgery for peritonitis at a private home, with full-time nurses and a hospital-type bed. He asked for anonymity because the arrangement was illegal.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/20/2904637/cuban-doctors-treated-private.html
Millions in the US have no access to medical care and millions more get lousy care. Those with insurance or money, seldom examine the relationships between public and private care, charity and elective treatments. In fact, it is widely accepted in the US, that wealthier people deserve better care since after all they can pay for it. In the US, a typical breast augmentation costs from $5,000 to $15,000 or more if you include follow-ups.
So why not for once do an article on those who are trying to reduce corruption, whether financial or quality of care? Or those working to improve delivery and compensation to deserving health care workers in Cuba. It might be less interesting to the haters and greedy who only want to hear of negatives and failures in Cuba, but we have much to learn from each other if we only open our minds to the possibilities.
http://cubacorrupcion.impela.net/
WIKILEAK DOCUMENT : Viewing cable 08HAVANA103, CUBAN HEALTHCARE: “AQUI NADA ES FACIL”-
In one Cuban hospital, patients had to bring their own light bulbs. In another, the staff used ``a primitive manual vacuum'' on a woman who had miscarried. In others, Cuban patients pay bribes to obtain better treatment.
Those and other observations by an unidentified nurse assigned to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana were included in a dispatch sent by the mission in January 2008 and made public this month by WikiLeaks.
Titled ``Cuban healthcare: Aquí Nada es Facil'' -- Nothing here is easy -- the cable offers a withering assessment by the nurse, officially a Foreign Service Health Practitioner, or FSHP, who already had lived in Cuba for 2 ½ years.
CLICK LINK BELOW FOR ORGINAL WIKILEAK DOCUMENT
http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/01/08HAVANA103.html
You really have to read hard to figure this out.
This article couldn't be just another attempt of Miami Cubans to calumniate Cuba, could it?
Nah.
And of course, scams like this never happen in the US. The US is perfect because it is not like Cuba with those bad commonists 'n all.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: DOCUMENT - CUBA: ROUTINE REPRESSION: POLITICAL SHORT-TERM DETENTIONS AND HARASSMENT IN CUBA- 2012
The Cuban government wages a permanent campaign of harassment and short-term detentions of political opponents to stop them from demanding respect for civil and political rights. Since Amnesty International’s last report on the respect for the freedom of expression in Cuba, published in June 2010 the situation has further deteriorated with a steady increase in the number of arbitrary detentions. Criticism of the government is not tolerated in Cuba and it is routinely punished with arbitrary and short-term detentions, “acts of repudiation” (demonstrations led by government supporters with the alleged participation of state security officials aimed at harassing and intimidating government critics), intimidation, harassment and politically motivated criminal prosecutions.
The authorities continue to deny those wanting political change in Cuba their right to express and share their ideas freely and without reprisal or retaliation. Repression is routine. Peaceful demonstrators, independent journalists and human rights activists are routinely detained for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement. Activists are often detained as a preventive measure to stop them from attending public demonstrations or private meetings.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE REPORT!
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/007/2012/en/ccc6aeba-e892-4079-9e4a-63eebecd8a76/amr250072012en.html