Community-based Health Care

Gail Reed, Editor

n this issue of MEDICC Review, we take a second opportunity to put you in touch with Cuba's experience in community-based health care.  Our cover story in Insights features  an interview with Dr. Miguel Salinas, family doctor in the heart of Havana; and this section continues with notes from Dr. Ethan Loeb, a MEDICC resident just returning from a community medicine rotation in Havana's Plaza municipality.

In Health News From Cuba, you'll get a look at one journalist's contribution to health education efforts on the island—through his weekly newspaper column, the one we chose here devoted to abortion.  But perhaps the best measure of his success is that many of José de la Osa's articles end up on the bulletin boards of neighborhood family doctor offices.

Health education is the underlying theme of "Male Adolescents and Contraception" in the Cuban Medical Research section.  Among other aspects, the article explores the relationship between sexism and contraception among male teenagers in Cuba.

"Mortality Rate as an Expresson of Differences in Living Conditions" offers basic recommendatons for how knowledge of communities' differing Human Development Indices can be put to work to predict key health problems—and get them solved that much faster.

We are pleased to publish "Cuba's National Immunization Program", an original piece by Dr. Miguel Galindo, the program's national director, offering his perspectives on immunization history, campaigns and impact in Cuba.  He also outlines the relationship of vaccination efforts to primary health care models and community-based organizations in the Cuban experience.

Moving into key fields in primary care, "Pediatric Care and Selected Child Health Indicators" describes the Cuban Maternal-Child Health Program and its interfacing components.

"Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Pregnancy" explores the complications of these illnesses for Cuban women and their newborns, and alerts OB-GYN specialists to the incidence of these infections.

AIDS is the subject of a second feature in Health News from Cuba.  "AIDS and a Cuban Vaccine Update" carries the latest statistics on HIV-AIDS in Cuba, plus comments from 36-year-old Dr. Carlos Duarte—the man heading up Cuba's AIDS vaccine research team at Havana's Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center.

Finally, MEDICC Director Diana García was forced to expand her column in this issue—since What's New at MEDICC turns out to be a great deal!

We hope you'll become a regular reader of MEDICC Review —we will be devoting upcoming issues to themes such as Women's Health, Environmental Health, Bioethics, Traditional Medicine, and Seniors and Health.  Let us hear from you on the topics you would like to see in our website pages.

Sincerely,

Gail A. Reed, Editor