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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

It Shows a Lack of Respect to Distribute 200 Cars Among All Cuban Doctors

It Shows a Lack of Respect to Distribute 200 Cars Among All Cuban
Doctors / Juan Juan Almeida

Juan Juan Almeida, February 1, 2016, Martí Noticias — The Ministry of
Public Health claims it is giving an award but it is creating a total
hornet's nest. On tour throughout the country, Dr. Marcia Cobas, Vice
Minister of Health and a member of the Central Committee of the Party,
announces in every hospital she visits that she's going to distribute
computer laptops and 200 automobiles among the Cuban doctors.

I wonder how you divide 200 Chinese vehicles among all the Cuban
professionals if — according to official figures — there is one nurse in
Cuba for every 126 inhabitants, a doctor for every 159 residents, a
dentist for every 1,066 neighbors and a uterine endoscopist for every
200 inhabitants.

The health authorities, inherent in a dictatorship with a sinister
administration, aren't recognizing the work of the doctors. They are
awarding disloyalty and indifference to the common problems of a very
sensitive profession.

A renowned professor, whose name I can't mention except to say that he's
an active member of the Cuban Society of Psychiatry and a specialist in
the study of human behavior, assures me that a governmental decision of
this type is a dangerous exercise in control that causes spontaneous
hatred and manifests in unusual racist insults, sexist judgments,
classist complaints and accusations among the physicians who, in
addition to being competitive, are totally abusive. The doctors are
hopping mad, washing their dirty linen in public.

The measure, as is logical, far from lessening the discontent of the
fraternity of doctors, increases the mistrust, intensifies the repressed
hatred and generates a worrisome atmosphere of tension among the doctors
who get ready to fight, wielding usury as a weapon, to be the winners of
the prize.

"No one can conceive that using a stimulus of this type, it's obvious,
as an instrument of confrontation among colleagues, creates solidarity.
We Cubans know very well, since we have suffered it for more than 56
years, that similar practices never gave positive results," says the
physician.

The plan includes, in addition, Cuba's State phone company, ETECSA,
giving landline telephones to all doctors and dentists. Now, across the
length and breadth of the country, hospital directors began to complete
the pertinent lists in order to execute the measure, but they are facing
the growing discontent that is apparent among the rest of the health
personnel: the technicians and nurses who have all been ignored and are
in very bad moods.

"Although it seems exaggerated, we are up against a committed attack on
the country's economy which, in some way, also affects the national
population in terms of health. Because, although we are making Cuban
doctors compete, it also discourages creating a framework of negotiation
that is very susceptible to blackmail," concludes my friend. "You only
have to read Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, well-known students of behavior,
to understand that with this type of award there are negative effects
that lower the moral positivity of the prize and the effect on work of
not awarding a prize."

Translated by Regina Anavy

Source: It Shows a Lack of Respect to Distribute 200 Cars Among All
Cuban Doctors / Juan Juan Almeida – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/it-shows-a-lack-of-respect-to-distribute-200-cars-among-all-cuban-doctors-juan-juan-almeida/

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