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http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/synopsis.html
¡Salud! - Synopsis
Find out what puts Cuba on the map in the quest for global health …
A timely examination of human values and the health issues that affect us
all, ¡Salud!looks at the curious case of Cuba, a cash-strapped country with
what the BBC calls ‘one of the world’s best health systems.’ From the
shores of Africa to the Americas, !Salud!hits the road with some of the
28,000 Cuban health professionals serving in 68 countries, and explores the
hearts and minds of international medical students in Cuba -- now numbering
30,000, including nearly 100 from the USA. Their stories plus testimony
from experts around the world bring home the competing agendas that mark the
battle for global health—and the complex realities confronting the movement
to make healthcare everyone’s birth right. [+ More]
Against the alarming backdrop of the global health crisis and deteriorating
public health systems in even the richest nations, ¡Salud! tells the
little-known story of Cuba: a poor country overcoming its lack of resources
to provide universal health care and help other developing nations do the
same.
A feature documentary, ¡Salud! is directed by Academy Award nominee Connie
Field and co-produced by Gail Reed. The film spans three continents to look
at the philosophy and health professionals placing Cuba on the map in the
worldwide movement to make health care a global birthright. Today, Cubans
are among the world’s healthiest people, despite the island’s poverty.
Cuba’s volunteer corps now posts 28,000 health professionals in 68
countries; and Cuban medical schools will graduate an unprecedented 100,000
new doctors from developing countries over the next decade.
The film’s cameras reach into The Gambia, rural South Africa, coastal
villages of Honduras and river settlements in the Amazon, where a Cuban is
often the first doctor a poor community has ever seen. In some nations they
staff entire health systems. In all, they take with them the experience and
philosophy of their own community-oriented, preventive and universal health
care model fundamentally at odds with a global wave of healthcare
privatization.
¡Salud! questions what propels Cuban doctors to serve where most others
won’t, and grapples with the tensions their presence sometimes provokes.
A FILM ABOUT THE PRESSING HEALTH ISSUES THE WORLD FACES TODAY…
¡Salud! probes the competing agendas that mark the battle for global health.
The film opens in a South Africa freed from apartheid, but bound by its
social and economic legacy. The challenge: provide health care for the
country’s majority for the first time in history. One problem: a massive
brain drain of qualified health professionals. One decision: turn to Cuba
for doctors and medical educators. Explains former Director General of
Health, Dr. Ayanda Ntsaluba: “Cuba shared our philosophy of health equity,
prevention-oriented care and training doctors for public service.”
In Venezuela, the film takes viewers into barrios on Caracas hillsides and
deep into the Amazon, where the largest contingent of Cuban health
professionals now works, focusing on their role in a country undergoing
dramatic change.
In Honduras, Cubans’ service in poor, indigenous communities pits the public
against the country’s medical establishment, ensnaring in the dispute a
government already straining under healthcare budget cuts mandated by the
IMF.
By contrast, in The Gambia—one of the world’s smallest, poorest nations—we
find government taking the lead to bring health care to all. Over 100
Cuban doctors join local health workers at new clinics and hospitals across
the country. Comments Dr. Yankuba Kassama, The Gambia’s Minister of Health:
“Our infant mortality is down, life expectancy up … We wouldn’t be able to
narrate this success story without the help of the Cubans.”
TRAINING HEALERS TO PROMOTE HEALTH, NOT SIMPLY TREAT DISEASE…
Cubans can’t stay abroad forever: home-grown doctors are needed with a
commitment to serve the underserved. ¡Salud! offers a rare glimpse into the
Latin American Medical School (ELAM) in Havana, now the largest medical
school in the world. There, 12,000 low-income students from 27
countries—including nearly 100 from the USA—receive a free medical education
in exchange for pledging to return to poor communities when they graduate.
Students share their dreams and concerns about a world where values learned
in their training are not always rewarded.
CAN HEALTH FOR ALL BE POSSIBLE?
Through the Cuban experience, the film challenges us to reflect on the
larger questions: What will it take to stop disease from decimating poor
countries and reaching around the globe? How can we get enough doctors and
health workers to where they are needed most? Do governments have a
responsibility for the health of their citizens?
In today’s world, shouldn’t every person be born with the right to a healthy
chance at life?
See the Trailer
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Check out all that glitters with the MSN Entertainment Guide to the Academy
Awards® http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/?icid=ncoscartagline2
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