Cuba and Venezuela shape new generation of “Revolutionary Doctors”
by: W.T. WHITNEY JR., a retired pediatrician who practiced medicine for thirty years in rural Maine.
July 28 2011
Revolutionary Doctors by Steve Brouwer
Monthly Review Press, 2011, 256 pages, $18.95 paperback, (also available in hardcover and electronic editions)
Steve Brouwer identifies his physician father as the only socialist he knew growing up. The elder Brouwer listened to patients, and he was incensed if they stayed away because of no money. Such early awareness evidently prepared the way for the author’s remarkable book “Revolutionary Doctors.”
Brouwer traces the evolution of Cuba’s health system that has led to Cuban-Venezuelan collaboration in providing health care for their people and medical assistance throughout the world.
His book recovers history, outlines visionaries’ political groundings, and details the activities of Cuban and Venezuelan doctors and medical students.
For Brouwer, Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s teachings, exemplified in his 1960 speech “On Revolutionary Medicine” , have borne fruit. Che believed, “the best way of telling is doing.” He judged doctors “by their practice of solidarity and equality.”…
Read the entire review in People’s World
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