Searching Without Success for Detergent in Cuba, Where H1NI Has Fertile Ground to Reproduce

Searching Without Success for Detergent in Cuba, Where H1NI Has Fertile
Ground to Reproduce
Professor Mark J. Perry

In his movie "Sicko" and elsewhere (see 20/20 interview here), Michael
Moore has extolled the virtues of Cuba's universal health care system,
including claiming that Cubans enjoy better health care than Americans,
that there is a "clinic in every neighborhood in Cuba," and that
according to the World Health Organization and others, "If there's one
thing they do right in Cuba, it's health care, and there's very little
debate about that."

Here's another version of the health care story in Cuba, told not by an
obese, multi-millionaire filmmaker from America, but by a courageous
woman who lives in Cuba, and writes about her daily struggles there on
the award-winning blog Generacion Y:

I search, without success, for a bottle of detergent to wash the glasses
smeared with grease and fingerprints, which don't yield to water and the
dishcloth. Looking for the soapy liquid, I have walked part of Havana
today, as the television announcers call on us to strengthen our hygiene
before the advance of H1N1. The alert occasioned by the epidemic,
however, has not caused the shops to lower the price of cleaning
products, not even the cost of simple soap which is the equivalent of
the wages for a full day's work. Instead, the opposite has happened. The
collapse in imports has been most notable in those that are used to
bathe and disinfect.

The voice of the announcer calls on us to wash our hands often, use
handkerchiefs when we sneeze and maintain good personal hygiene, but the
reality forces us into filth. We lack face masks, running water in many
houses, the simple possession of vitamin C to strengthen the organism,
and cleanliness in public places. Thus, the so-called "swine flu" has
fertile ground to reproduce. While it advances through our
neighborhoods, the official media maintain their reserve and don't
mention the closed schools, the quarantined sites and the full hospitals.

This illusion of paradise is killing us. This wanting it to appear that
we live better and that our statistics put us at the world average,
cannot manage to hide the fragility of our society in the face of an
epidemic that requires material resources in the hands of citizens.

If soaping the body and having a bit of alcohol to sterilize the hands
become luxuries, how can we stop the pandemic that is already upon us?
If the September ration of soap never even reached the rationed market,
how is it possible that on TV they call for hygiene without referring to
the material resources to accomplish it. Is it that they haven't noticed
before that we are sinking into the dirt?

They have to face the ravages of conjunctivitis, diarrhea, and the
viruses to figure out that sanitation is not only a white coat and a
stethoscope, but starts in the streets, with collecting the garbage,
with showers in the houses and with a mother who should be able to wash
the plate her child will eat off.

Searching Without Success for Detergent in Cuba, Where H1NI Has Fertile
Ground to Reproduce | Benzinga.com (7 October 2009)
http://www.benzinga.com/21819/searching-without-success-for-detergent-in-cuba-where-h1ni-has-fertile-ground-to-reproduce