DVD: Doc: Healing Africa - The Havana Prescription (updated edition 2017)

DVD This 2012 documentary by director Tom Fawthrop investigating Cuba's contribution to health services in Africa, has now been updated by the director in 2017. 2017 version now includes:

• Additional footage of Fidel with Mandela
• The WHO conference Geneva special award to Cuban medical teams for the Ebola campaign.
• Updated narrative
• New length 45mins

£13.00 inc p&p

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Cuba’s programme of providing medical help to poor communities around the world and wherever disaster occurs is well known. This film gives a thoughtful and detailed account of the influence of Cuban medicine on the development of healthcare in South Africa.

On leaving prison, Nelson Mandela’s first overseas visit was to Cuba. When he became South African President he asked for Cuban help in developing healthcare in a country where doctors were mainly drawn from the middle classes and looked for better paid jobs in the private sector or abroad. Cuba has supplied 600 doctors to South Africa since 1996 but also welcomed students from poor areas to Cuba to train as doctors for free in the expectation that they would return to work in their communities.

The film follows five such students as they receive training in both Cuba and South Africa and highlights the differences between the Cuban approach with its emphasis on preventative medicine and its patient-centred approach and the restricted curative approach in South Africa.

The five students give a clear account of the clash of healthcare cultures when they return home, sending a clear message of the superiority of Cuban provision which guarantees the right of everybody in the community to high quality, free, universal medical services.

338 students have now completed six years of training and are practicing in South Africa. 406 are still studying in Cuba and 500 have just left to start their studies in Cuba. It seems that their impact on the development of the South African health provision far exceeds their numbers.

This is an excellent film for local groups to show to deepen understanding of how Cuba’s contribution to world health works at a personal level and of the spirit of humanity it nurtures through the medical training it provides.