Cuba - small country BIG HEALTHCARE

• Cubans have universal access to free health care (provided by the government).
• Althrough Cuba is a developing country, Cubans live as long or longer than Americans
• Cuban babies survive as well as American babies
• Cuba spends half of much on health care, (as a percentage of its GNP), as the US, but provides health care to all its citizens
• "Health Tourists" go to Cuba from other countries for medical treatments because of Cuba's high quality, low cost health care.
• Cuba's government provides free medical education to its own students and to students from around the world, including the US.
• The Cuban government sends many of its best medical graduates to third-world countries in need of medical assistence, (Haiti, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, etc)

Speaker: Bridget Harrison is a 4th year medical student at UCSF and has a Masters of Public Health at UC , Berkeley. She spent one month in Cuba in 2004 learning about :"Cuba's Public Health System" through the MEDIIC Program, (Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba), and will talk about what she saw.

Sponsered by the San Francisco Chapter of Healthcare for All, the California P:hysicians Alliance, and the California Universal Health Care Orgnizing Project