Venezuelan doctors question the qualifications of the Cubans, charging that Cuban physicians are incompetent, and worse, that “Barrio Adentro is nothing more than indoctrination. Many of them are not even doctors.” Native doctors protest the influx of Cubans into their country, whom they accuse of taking jobs from unemployed Venezuelan doctors and charging too little for their medical services in the Barrio Adentro system.
Yet as soon as the doctors entered the Venezuelan communities and began to practice, the benefits of Barrio Adentro became evident, subduing criticism. In one year, government statistics suggested that eighteen million people, or 70% of the population, had been treated and that 6,000 lives had been saved. Carlos Cordeiro, a physician in Sucre, explains the approach to care in Barrio Adentro as follows: “We do preventive medicine. The idea is that if the people learn to live better, they will not need medicines.” With an interest in the long-term health of their community, doctors assist their patients with family planning and educate the community in hygiene and sanitation. Primary care has immense advantages for the community in the sense that, as one doctor commented, it is “cheaper, because you avoid more complicated health problems.” Barrio Adentro also encourages more comprehensive and personalized healthcare, since the proximity of the clinics to patients’ homes allows physicians to make house calls, checking on sick patients and monitoring the general health of households. Luis Casadiego, a member of the Ali Primera health committee in Montepiedad, says, “Pretty much everyone knows where [the doctors] live, since they stay at people’s homes and give their addresses to patients. They are called on for emergencies quite often in the evenings and on weekends.”
The success of Barrio Adentro has been appreciated outside of the Venezuelan borders as well. After touring the health missions in October 2003, a representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) praised what he observed: “To us, this program is very important, because it is a type of community medical attention, which results from an effort by society and the authorities to care for all the citizens wherever they are.” Renato Guzmao, a member of the Pan American Health Organization, added that “Barrio Adentro permits the planning of a healthcare system based on the demands of the population, not just on how much they have and how much they can afford.”
Within the serviced neighborhoods, the Barrio Adentro program is so popular that many believe it helped Chávez win the 2004 referendum. Maria Sojo, who hails from Coche, right outside of Caracas, remarked that “Nothing like this ever existed before. We were never taken into consideration. Now we are and we are grateful to our president for what he has done for us.” The once-feared Cuban doctors are now being praised: journalist Stuart Munckton wrote, “The doctors are extremely friendly, warm, and genuinely compassionate. They clearly have real feeling for their patients and have personal investment in them getting better. The doctors treat their patients, not just with respect, but informally as equals.”
Ulada Gastiano, a Cuban doctor who was sent to Valencia, commented that “People in Venezuela at first had their reservations…They had their fears and they didn’t come to us. But after people saw that we did have the knowledge, that they came to us and got what they needed, our relationships have improved and it’s good.” Still, Venezuelan doctors protested in the streets of Caracas in July 2005, carrying signs saying, “No More Cubanization!” One doctor lamented that “Venezuelan doctors are underpaid and many are unemployed,” but others focused on the poor condition of the public hospitals.
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