Health News from Cuba

UNDP Publishes Report on Human Development
and Equity in Cuba

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has published a 216-page study on human development and equity in Cuba, which is perhaps the most important single document published this year on the social and economic situation in the country.

In 1990, UNDP introduced the Human Development Index (HDI), in an attempt to bring the human dimension to bear on measures of economic growth and to balance other strictly economic indices used exclusively until then to measure development. This brought more clearly into the world's focus the final goal of development: that is, the wellbeing and fourishing of human beings in all their dimensions-economic, social and cultural. "Economic growth is not a goal in itself," noted Luis Gómez Echeverri, resident UNDP representative in Cuba at the presentation of the new study, "but a means of reaching the final goal of wellbeing for all."

In 1999, the UNDP´s annual Report on Human Development expressed concern over the process of globalization, which, said Gómez, "has led to an increase in inequalities among countries and within countries, multiplying differences in income, the number of people submerged in poverty and entire nations left behind....In short, stated the report, 'globalization based on the market is generating new threats to human security, in rich and poor countries alike.' And to this end, (the report) urged a globalization that would be more ethical, equitable, inclusive, more secure for human beings, ensuring more sustainability and development, and less poverty and privation for millions of people."

In this context, a number of country studies have been initiated, and at the presentation of the research on Cuba-led by the Studies Center on the World Economy in Havana-Gómez called Cuba "a good example of those nations which appear on the list of the poorest countries, but which when measured against the Human Development Index moved up several slots in their ranking due to important accomplishments in areas key to human development, such as education, health and life expectancy."

He stressed that the current findings build on the 1996 version of the study, but this time around, the concept of equity has been placed more profoudly in the center of the research "as one of the main dimensions of human development."

The report, which details the development and equity record of Cuba in such fields as health, education, housing, culture, gender perspective, and environment, notes in the health section that "An evaluation of 25 countries in the Americas, measuring relative inequalities in health, revealed that Cuba is the country with the best health situation in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is also the country which has achieved the most effective impact with resources, although scarce, invested in the health sector." (p. 103)

The full volume is titled: Study on Human Development and Equity in Cuba, 1999 (Investigación sobre Desarrollo Humano y Equidad en Cuba, 1999), UNDP/PNUD, 2000.