Health and organic food in Cuba
Posted: August 26th, 2009 | Author: Studds | Filed under: World | 3 Comments »There’s a lot of lessons we could learn from Cuba. That’s right, Cuba. Poor, communist nation, currently the subject of US embargoes. Admittedly, I don’t fully understand the political situation there, but here’s what I do understand: in 2003 Cuba is ranked even 7th (behind 30 other countries) in terms of Healthy Average Life Expectancy (HALE – figures taken from WHOSIS).
The HALE in Cuba is 68. Japan’s HALE is 75. Japan spent $2018 (average of spending from 1995-2006) to achieve this. The USA (the least effective spender on health) spent $4949 to achieve a HALE of just 69. On average, the 30 top ranked countries spend $2475 per capita. Cuba spent just $211. The nearest rival in terms of health spending effectiveness was Singapore (HALE 70, per capita spending $941) which spent $13 per year of healthy average life, versus $3 per year in Cuba. The top five performers are Cuba, Singapore, Malta, Spain and Japan.
There are of course lessons to be learnt from all of these countries. Here are a few that we can learn from Cuba: focus on prevention. Train doctors, and imbed them in communities, rather than hospitals alone. Fund research. Use vaccines and eliminate diseases. Measles was eliminated in Cuba in the early or mid 1990’s. Grow and eat healthy food.
Cuba has been assisted greatly by the US embargoes on this front – it had no choice, other than starving. Cuban’s grow food without petrochemicals such as fertilisers and pesticides. They don’t depend on oil to plow the earth or ship produce great distances. Instead, farms are interspersed within communities, including within cities. They use natural substances to deter pests, and use complementary crop techniques, instead of monocultures that require substantial chemical intervention. The result is cheap, healthy food – and it shows in healthy average life expectancy.
Tags: Community, Cuba, Education, Embargoes, Food, HALE, Health, Japan, Monocultues, Oil, Poverty, Preventions, Service Provision, USA, Vaccines
The likelihood that the US can change anything is inversely proportional to the size and number of corporations that stand in the way. The US food industry in particular is very happen with the status quo and the FDA seems totally impotent.
Also, don’t forget about the very excellent gapfinder.org. It was built specifically to find “gaps” like this in the running of nations. Here is the graph of life expectancy vs. health spending per person: http://bit.ly/28BIyZ
The first step in creating change is showing people that there’s a problem. That’s not what this post does – it aims to show that there’s an opportunity. People often are not motivated by opportunity. They say- well, that’s great – but I don’t need that. So yeah, there won’t be a change in the US until people are convinced that the status quo is a problem.
Also, gapminder seems very cool – I’ll need to have more of an expore when I get a chance.
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