Wednesday, December 14th
6 pm to 9 pm
4157 Broadway @ 176th Street
Washington Heights, NYC
Join Steve Brouwer, author of Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care, for a book talk and signing.
In addition, a short documentary film about Cuban medical internationalism in Nicaragua, “Cancion de Esteli” by Cuban poet and filmmaker Victor Casaus, will be shown.
What a terrific book! I have been researching Cuban medical internationalism for several years, and found Steve Brouwer’s book an excellent, insightful first-person account of how Cuban medical cooperation (and not aid!) is changing the face of the developing world.
The Cuban medical education model, so eloquently described in this book, has not merely transformed health care in much of Central and South America. It has shown doctors and medical students who work in the unjust and dysfunctional U.S. health care system that another world is possible.
Venezuela and Cuba clearly show that the basic human right of access to medical and health care in time of need is not dependent on the level of economic development. Venezuela and Cuba are not rich countries yet, and in spite of this, health care reaches the majority of their populations. They should be considered points of reference for poor countries that want to break with the underdevelopment of health. This book is a rigorous and balanced account of how they did it.
Revolutionary Doctors tells the story of Cuba’s extraordinary medical personnel who leave their homes and families to support radical struggles for health care abroad. And it shows how this struggle is taken up in places like Venezuela, where poor communities are organizing to provide health care from the ground up. This is a story that deserves to be known.
Steve Brouwer is one of the nation’s best front-line reporters from the ongoing class war.
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