W6: Activity Post

In Social Determinants of Health: The Solid Facts(2003), it states that new social determinants of health affects people’s health standards. Poor social and economic circumstances can affect health standards and it also connected many other related situations about people’s health standards. For example, poor social and economic circumstances related with early education of children, unemployment, and basic housing standards. “The health impact of early development and education lasts a lifetime”(WHO, 2003). In Cuba, poor social and economic circumstances has been become one of the pertinent determinants affect health standards. The political policy also plays an important role in public health system. In the following discussion, I will explain more information about the social determinants of health in Cuba.

In Cuba, the poor social and economic circumstances has always pay attention in people’s health status. Yaffe(2016) said that the Human Development Index show in the “high human development” category in the health and education, women’s participation and political inclusion. Of course, the salaries are low, but the housing standards in Cuba has a very impressive results. “About 85% of Cubans own their own homes and rent cannot exceed 4% of a tenant’s income”. In fact, all these consequences depends on fifty years of experiences of Cuba’s National Health system(Keck et al, 2012). It starts from 1959 and Cuba had only one rural hospital. The first thing Cuba government did is to state the Rural Medical Service which added hundreds of physician volunteers join in. The medical schools encouraged professionals to practice more on their experiences and this following behavior made a big help by providing free tuition. The development of the medical systems quickly grown in 20 years. The policymakers also found that health professionals should also know the social, biological, economic, and cultural factors that affect the health status. It guided the social determinants of health in the right way and Cuba’s social and economic circumstances has been improved in their experienced medicine model.

In Cuba’s public health system, the HIV/AIDS policies in Cuba is a very good example to analyze Cuban model to improve their health status. The HIV/AIDS policies controlled every steps about the transition of virus. The foregin-dervied blood products, the education of prevention and control actions for communicable disease, the isolation of affected individuals and combination therapy from specialists(Hoffman, 2004). The policies are very serious and stringent and the results are very successful. The Cuban model of their HIV/AIDS policies has also helped many other countries under the regulations of their public health system(Hoffman, 2004). 

When people talked about the social determinants of health, the determinants often is the bad impacts and it still afflicted in a particular countries. However, the example of Cuba showed a positive side of the social determinants. Under the 50 years of US blockade, Cuba developed its medication on their own effort. Although Cuba still has places to improve their social determinants of health, Cubans do not need to spend money on public health system and its model need to be known and learned by more people.

Work cited:

Yaffe, H. (2016). Cuba is poor, but who is to blame – Castro or 50 years of US blockade. The Conversation. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/cuba-is-poor-but-who-is-to-blame-castro-or-50-years-of-us-blockade-69528

Keck, C. W., & Reed, G. A. (2012). The curious case of Cuba. American journal of public health, 102(8), e13–e22. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2012.300822

Hoffman S. Z. (2004). HIV/AIDS in Cuba: a model for care or an ethical dilemma?. African health sciences, 4(3), 208–209.

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