 If there's one thing they do right in Cuba, it's healthcare. When it may be surprising to see just how much the Cuban healthcare system is thriving. Cuba has the best healthcare system in the entire area. One thing that is well established in the global health community is the strength of the Cuban national health system. Despite being a poor country, Cuba has one of the strongest healthcare systems in the world. And in many respects, much better than the U.S. And so now, after all these years, one thing is clear. The Cuban people have free, universal healthcare. The Cuban national health system is destroyed. The consultants are in very bad conditions. The hospitals are broken. People are dying in the corridor. The patients are without oxygen. Hospitals without electricity. I don't know if you've seen what the people of social media do. That's pure reality. Since the communist revolution of 1959, hundreds of journalistic articles, reports and documentaries have celebrated the supposed wonder of the Cuban health system. Independent health organizations in the world, and even our own CIA, believes that the Cubans have a pretty good health system. Everything is part of an elaborate propaganda campaign that distorts the reality of Cuban medical attention. In reality, clinics lack routine ministers, including antibiotics, bandages, syringes, oxygen, and, in some cases, current water. The patients occupy the corridors because there are not enough doctors to treat their basic needs. And their hospitals are insolent and decrepit. For decades, Cuban medical attention has been the one of a country impoverished by communism. The only new thing is that due to social media and the pandemic, the regime's facade is finally dismantled. The return of the Cuban regime's propaganda has been so successful that, at the beginning of 2021, some reporters assured that the response from Cuba to the pandemic had been exemplary. Only about 440 Cubans have died from COVID-19, giving the island one of the lowest death rates per capita in the world. Three months after that transmission, the Cubans protested against the regime on the streets and on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. In part, their indignation emerged due to the precarious state of the Cuban health system during the pandemic. In the past few weeks, Cuba has experienced its biggest spike in coronavirus cases yet. At the same time, it is getting harder to find food on the island. The protests that swept across Cuba, the largest in decades, stunned the communist-run government. Their only sin when it comes to healthcare seems to be that they don't do it for a profit. Common citizens have been equipped with mobile phones, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, which allows them to publish the truth about their real experience in Cuban hospitals. So when you say that all you have to do to realize the truth about the Cuban health care system is actually go to Cuba, well you have the example of someone who did go, who was Michael Moore, and he came up with SICO, which obviously presents the Cuban health care system as a great triumph. I meant do not go on one of those stage Potemkin tours. He went to a facility that was prepared to receive him that was part of this montage, you know, clearly. That wouldn't stand today because you have so many videos coming out, I think, from facilities in Cuba. Is that due to social media? It's due to social media and to telephones. People are, you know, it's almost daily. The thing is, it's mostly in Spanish and mostly you have to look for them. But if you go on YouTube and, I mean, on Facebook, it's daily. Daily people are posting this. How did the Cuban propaganda machine manage to deceive so many people during so much time? Mainly, it was through the myth of the so-called medical missions outside. Since the 1960s, Cuba sends health care teams to different countries to provide medical attention. Your doctor has been educated in the idea of saving lives! Castro sent the first medical mission in Helia in 1963. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when the regime lost its main subsidiary source, Cuba intensified the program to fill in with money its very menguadas arcas. The Cuban regime assures that its medical missions are a humanitarian gesture that shows the altruistic spirit of communism and its political project. In 1960, Ernesto Alias el Che Guevara proclaimed the emergence of the revolutionary doctor and announced that the individualism should disappear in Cuba. He told the story of a group of doctors in Havana who demanded certain economic retributions to go to rural areas of the country to attend to the sick. He dreamed of replacing them with a new class of doctors extracted from the countryside. Those peasants, he said, would have immediately run with all enthusiasm to his brothers. Our country will be able to send the doctor who needs the darkest corners of the world. This will be a battle of solidarity against selfishness. This is the quote from Fidel Castro, who is inscribed on the wall of the Medical Faculty of the University of Havana. On his side, there is a map that shows all the places in the world where Cuban medical missions have been established. White jackets, you know, after a long cross-Atlantic flight with their flags, you know, not even doctors without borders that has an amazing program has that kind of propaganda behind them. What fantastic work the Cuban doctors have done that they should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. For the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021. And I'm very happy to nominate them. There they will give a diploma, applause, they will continue working, they will not continue paying. And the world will continue to think that what they are doing is well done. It is not good that they use people for the benefit of a government. In 2013, Dr. Rod Serrillos Molina participated in the Cuban medical mission in Sierra Leone, where doctors from numerous countries helped contain the epidemic of Ebola. The Cuban regime promised the members of the mission that when returning to the island they would be received as heroes and that the state would give a new automobile to each one. How much did you receive in Sierra Leone? Well, in Sierra Leone we did not receive salary. Nothing. No, the problem was that Cuba told us, that we were going to volunteer, volunteer because since it was such a lethal epidemic, even if you thought you could die, a large part of the health staff who attended that mission told us that we were going to volunteer, that it would be a solidarity. Rios says that he received a loss to cover his costs of maintenance. Meanwhile, the doctors from other countries were generously remunerated. And it turns out that all the people who were there, from other entities, for example World Health Organization, doctors from Spain, from Canada, even from here in the United States, from front-line doctors who were there working, they were also volunteers, but they paid for them, which was the difference. However, the doctors from other countries who worked with me there, who had the opportunity to compensate, they won $7,000 monthly, meaning that they were playing their lives, but they were receiving a monetary compensation for what they were doing. Dr. José Ángel Sánchez was part of a medical mission in Venezuela until he escaped in 2015. He points out that the San Fritrión countries pay for these services and that the money goes directly to the Arcas of the Cuban regime, but not to the doctors who do their job in the field. And a payment of around $7,000 per doctor at that time to the Cuban government. And the Cuban government, in turn, paid each doctor the 0.03% that would come to $105,000 per month. Not more than that. The myth of altruistic and disinterested Cuban doctors began to take a risk in the year 2000. When two doctors from the mission in Zimbabwe managed to hit the airport in Johannesburg, where they reported that they were kidnapped. The doctors had denounced the Castro regime and were going back to Cuba against their will, possibly to go to jail. However, they managed to reach the United States where they received political asylum. In a report from 2020, Human Rights Watch concluded that Cuban medical missions violated the fundamental rights of the doctors, including the right to privacy, as well as freedom of expression, association and movement, among others. They pointed out that many doctors feel pressured to participate in the missions and fear repression if they don't do it. On the other hand, the governments that accept Cuban assistance, despite their abusive conditions, are at risk of becoming accomplices of human rights violations. For the past decade, the United States has encouraged Cuban doctors and nurses working outside Cuba to defect to the United States. In 2006, the administration of George W. Bush created a program of conditional freedom for Cuban medical professionals. This gave Cuban health workers deployed outside Cuba, permanent resident status, if they managed to reach an embassy or consulate from the United States. More than 7,000 medical workers took the opportunity. President Barack Obama canceled this project that was for the Cuban government. Because, obviously, it was a project that took away or put in danger. Dr. Julio César Alfonso is the president of the Solidaridad Sin Fronteras Foundation, which helps Cuban doctors who have managed to escape the regime. This program worked perfectly. There were some irregularities during the years that it worked, but everything worked pretty well. In 2014, the New York Times editorial team pronounced itself against the existence of the program. The immigration policy argued that it should not exacerbate the escape of brainwaves of a hostile nation. That is, the right of doctors to decide where they want to live and work should be subordinated to what suits the Cuban regime. There is some possibility that it will be restored. And still, there hasn't been much progress so far, but we continue to push through different contacts everywhere to try to restore some kind of program that benefits these professionals who escape from this slavery. But so far, there hasn't been much success. But the most positive thing is trying to eliminate this from happening. And that is what the international community should work on. After his stay in Sierra Leone, Dr. Rios assigned a new mission in Mexico. At the beginning, he was in a military base in the capital. One day, he and his colleagues were able to go out to buy phone cards in order to communicate with their families. He decided to escape. I was being dragged into the group when we were already on the street. And there was a subway station. I grabbed myself as if I were going to get my shoes on. I ran out. I asked the officer who was there and the man, thanks to God, put the card and let me enter the subway. I went two stops from the metro. I went out to the supermarket again. I called some of my patients who were in Mexico and who were waiting for me. And they left me. I told them, look, I'm in this direction and they went to look for me. Dr. Rios was able to work at a pharmacy outside Mexico City, where he could save enough money to pay a coyote to take him to the border with the United States. After entering the country, he stopped the immigration police. He remained in captivity for 42 days. It's pretty bad. You're arrested in a place like that. For me, I don't know. I've never had the opportunity to go to jail or anything like that. It's very miserable. In 2018, a group of Cuban doctors who had managed to escape from the missions demanded the Pan-American Health Organization, which is part of the World Health Organization. Dicha Entidad argues that doctors support the traffic of people and earn 75 million dollars to act as an intermediary between Cuba and the Anfitriones countries. The World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization are direct protagonists in this program of treatment of people. They have a leading role in this situation because they are the ones who directly manage the contracts with the Cuban government of almost all the countries where this type of activity is carried out. They are funds from the United Nations. They are funds that most of them come from the United States and they are going to stop the rise of a totalitarian regime. It's something really incredible. Through medical missions, the Cuban regime sells its health services abroad, while how does health services work for the inhabitants of the island? Cuba, quite surprisingly, has a very advanced biopharma industry. Unlike the rest of the developing world, there's no doctor shortage in Cuba. We've seen wide improvements in Cuban health across the population. Providing a kind of care that's both personal and persistent. We work in hospitals of the people, of the people of Apié, with very bad working conditions, where the syringes are counted that are sterilized to inject a patient. The speckles, which is the instrument with which the vaginal tests are done, to pregnant women or any woman. When they put a documentary, they put the best clinic, they put the best hospital. For example, before I came here, I worked in a national clinic two years before I came. An international clinic, where tourists go? Where tourists go. I worked in the international clinic, that was in Playa. There, of course, the attention is better. There are all the medicines, there are all the diagnostic means to make the patients, the beds are different. Of course, that's tourism. Look at a tourist and the first thing he's thinking is that he's going to give you $20. Because he's going to give you $20, you're going to have more than the salary you have in a month. So, that patient, you prioritize it, give him the best attention, because it's the way you have to get ahead. There are two systems of health in Cuba. One for the common population and the other for tourism and for the elite. When the defenders of the Cuban health system admit that it has deficiencies, they are usually attributed to the US embassy, which is maintained since 1962. For decades Cuba has heavily invested in its medical and pharmaceutical system, in part because of the six decade old US embargo. Cubans tend to blame their hardships on the US trade embargo. It's one of the biggest problems remains the embargo of medicine from US pharmaceutical companies. But the deplorable conditions in the Cuban hospitals are due to the lack of basic medical attention that are easily available in other countries, such as antibiotics and steroids. In the Cuban hospitals there are also a few beds and beds, and they were without water for six hours, twice a day, in the worst time of the pandemic. Technically, the embargo does not apply to medical products since 1992, when the US approved the law of democracy in Cuba. However, the stipulated law that pharmaceutical companies in the United States require a license to sell their products in Cuba. Critics are sure to point out that this bureaucratizes the process. Between 2003 and 2021, Cuba only bought 1.4 million annual dollars of medical products in the United States, while the market could be one of 50 to 100 million annual dollars. But that minimum level of sales is not due to the process of licensing. American companies would obtain the necessary permits to sell their products to Cuba with pleasure if the profits would compensate for the effort. But Cuba suffers from a serious shortage of debts because it produces few goods and services that the rest of the world wants to buy. And who are you blaming? The US government? No, my lord. That's your fault, the Cuban government. Because rum, the alcoholic beverage, is not missing. Yes? It's a cigarette. It's not missing either. The defenders of the Cuban health system tend to refer to the child mortality rate as their alleged evidence of their success. And yet, the Cubans are able to have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. Cuba has similar life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the United States. How is it possible that, according to official statistics, a Cuban baby has a probability of dying, which surpasses the Cuban baby in more than 50 percent? The columnist Nicholas Christof asked in The New York Times three years ago. Christof analyzed one of the most repeated figures to support the alleged exceptionality of the Cuban health system. Christof admitted that the figures should be taken with a dose of skepticism. However, he opted to interpret them to support the dominant narrative. Cuba has the public health system with which many Americans dream. There are figures that publish the Cuban regime about a very low infant mortality rate. In Cuba, everything is manipulated. Cuba uses several strategies to manipulate its infant mortality rate. For example, it is assured that fetuses with less probability of surviving out of the uterus never have the opportunity to be born. There is significant evidence that Cuban doctors force women to abort fetuses that show childbirth. We have to understand that physicians in Cuba are a member of the army, and they have to meet certain targets in terms of infant mortality. If they don't meet those targets, they face penalties. Vincent Quellozo is assistant professor at the University of George Mason. In 2018, he was co-author of an article that argues that the low infant mortality rate is the result of a wrong classification that uses a well-known indicator as late fatal deaths. Early neonatal deaths are in the first seven days. That means you reclassify the early seven-day deaths as late fetal deaths. That way they don't pop into the official statistics. We can actually look at statistics of how the ratio of late fetal death to early neonatal death are for most western countries. The ratio is generally 4 to 1, 6 to 1. Whereas Cuba is like an outlier where it's 14 or 15 to 1, which is a clear sign of this distorted set of incentives. So once you adjust for that, you find that Cuba's infant mortality rate goes as high as doubles, sometimes increases by half of what it is, sometimes twice what it is. Cuba has far surpassed the United States when it comes to COVID-19 and people surviving. In August of 2021, The New York Times reported that the Cuban health system was so rampant because it was loosing its oxygen and syringes supplies while the morgues and crematoriums were crumbling. As expected, dictator Miguel Villas Canel blamed the U.S. trade embargo. The doctors uploading videos to the social networks of the chaos there was people saying that there is no medicine, there is no medicine. It means that it doesn't work. At this time, the island collapsed. The health system collapsed. The hospitals collapsed, people dying in the corridors, patients without oxygen, hospitals without electricity, don't have enough energy or energy to treat cases of this magnitude. Dr. Río has three children of 7, 12 and 16 years old who still live in Cuba. He hopes to be able to bring them soon to the United States. In Cuba, being a specialist doctor for so many years, I couldn't do it. But look, right now I'm working as a health care assistant. I've been a specialist for more than 8 years, but I don't care. Because, as a citizen of the country, I can keep myself, and I can help my mother, for example, keep my children in Cuba. I said I wanted to be a doctor for 9 years, but until that, I have to do what I have to do. And do you want me to be honest? I don't care. It's true. I sincerely tell you. Cuban people are going to wake up and the Cuban people are going to get stronger than ever. The Cuban people realized that there was no external enemy and an earlier enemy. The enemy of the Cuban people is the Cuban government.