September 17, 2005
Through Cuban eyes (Updated)
According to Reuters, Venezuelans are flocking by the planeload to Cuba for free eye surgery offered, free of charge, by the castroite regime. They are filling hotels and crowding foreigner-hospital waiting rooms.
Annual per-capita income of Venezuelans: About $6,000
Annual per-capita income of Cubans: About $300
What a pleasure that must be for Cubans, who cannot get any measure of health care, to watch these wealthier Venezuelans traipse on in as a privileged class, privileged because back in Venezuela, they still possess a vote, a vote that is being courted by Chavez and castro to "prove" their legitimacy as leaders and the validity of their regimes.
Cubans don't have a vote.
So as they watch all the eye surgery going on, from their own un-cared-for eyes, this is what they see:
HAVANA, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Venezuelans are flocking to Havana by the planeload for free eye operations under a medical program funded by their country that is helping Cuba pay for oil imports and keep its socialist economy afloat.
More than 70,000 Venezuelans have been operated on for cataracts and other eye ailments this year and the goal is 150,000 by the end of 2005, a Cuban health official said on Friday.
Operation Miracle, a new program cementing the alliance between the left-wing governments of communist Cuba and oil-producing Venezuela, is restoring the vision of poor Venezuelans.
It has turned Cuban hospitals into production lines for eye surgery, jamming corridors with patients awaiting their turn.
"It's so wonderful for us. We could not afford this in Venezuela," said Fabiola, who was accompanying her 75-year-old mother from the city of Maracaibo for a cataract operation.
"This is how (Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez helps the poor," she said in a crowded waiting room at Havana's Pando Ferrer Eye Hospital. She declined to give her last name.
On Aug. 20, a record 1,648 eye operations at some 20 hospitals were performed in one day, the health official said.
Hotels and educational campuses have been taken over to house Venezuelan patients who get free air travel to Cuba, lodging and food while they are in Havana, courtesy of the Venezuelan state.
They are driven around in new buses from China, often escorted by police on motorcycles.
The VIP treatment underscores the priority President Fidel Castro has given to a program that is paying for vital shipments of 90,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan oil and gasoline, which represents an energy bill that exceeds $1.5 billion a year at today's high prices.
UPDATE: More commentary in Spanish from Desde El Exilio here.
Posted by Mora at September 17, 2005 11:00 AM
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Tracked on September 17, 2005 02:33 PM
Comments
"Annual per-capita income of Venezuelans: About $6,000
Annual per-capita income of Cubans: About $300
What a pleasure that must be for Cubans, who cannot get any measure of health care, to watch these wealthier Venezuelans traipse on in as a privileged class"
Don't worry. If Chavez stays in power, soon the Venezuelans won't be able to afford glasses, much less eye surgery in in Cuba.
Posted by: Hank at September 17, 2005 12:58 PM
