Maryland health officials who toured Cuban health facilities last week say the country has infant mortality, immunization and life expectancy rates far better than Baltimore's, despite the country's waning resources. Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Peter Beilenson, who organized the trip in conjunction with the Baltimore Orioles' baseball games against the Cuban national team, said, "For a country that's basically quite poor, their health statistics are tremendous. And they do it with a tiny percentage of the resources we have." Beilenson heads a group called the Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative that will advocate this year for single-payer health reforms in the state. The American delegation said "the centerpiece of Cuban health care is a well-developed system of neighborhood physicians. Each doctor is assigned about 120 families and given a house in the neighborhood with medical offices on the ground floor." Delegation member Dr. Javier Nieta of Johns Hopkins said, "In the morning, they see patients in the office. In the afternoon, they walk the neighborhood and visit people in their homes." On the downside, the American group said that Cuba's health facilities are deteriorating, the country only performs one-tenth the per capita transplants of the U.S. and the government sometimes enforces "coercive" health policies -- such as requiring "pregnant women not caring properly for themselves to be moved to group homes." Nevertheless, Johns Hopkins Children's Center Director Dr. George Dover said, "I went in as skeptical as anyone. I left there very impressed with what the Cuban government has accomplished."
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Carl Remick