Cuba's primary health care revolution: 30 years on

Abstract

With the community-based polyclinic as its centrepiece, the country’s primary health care system has produced enviable results as it continues to adapt to new challenges. Gail Reed reports from Havana.

Claudia Lopez, an intern, with outpatients at 5 de Septiembre Polyclinic, Havana.

Measuring child growth has always been essential to monitoring children’s health. Picture shows a Cuban youngster being weighed in 1980.

Cuba’s Committees for the Defence of the Revolution extended their influence into the realm of primary health care in 1980, helping to bring about change. Each of the committee members pictured here had responsibility for a list of health activities.

Primed for learning, medical students in 1980 are tutored in obstetrics. Back then, a year of every doctor’s training was spent at the primary care level. Today they are required to spend one internship year and two residency years training in family medicine after they receive their degrees.