A US Journalist Reports on Health from Havana, Gail Reed, MEDICC

Part VIII explores Cuba’s priority sectors: health, medical tourism, and biopharmaceuticals. It provides industry insights from doctors, executives, and a medical journal editor. Highlighted in these interviews are the successes of the Cuban healthcare system, research and collaboration opportunities, investments, pharmaceuticals, protocols, vaccine development, joint ventures, and the medical tourism sector. This chapter features an interview with Gail Reed, an American journalist living and working in Havana. Ms. Reed is the executive editor of MEDICC Review, a non-profit organization that publishes a peer-reviewed journal. The organization also runs conferences for health professionals to travel to Cuba and witness the healthcare system for themselves. In this conversation, Ms. Reed discusses her life in Cuba. It also looks at U.S.–Cuba health cooperation, the Cuban healthcare system, and how Cuba manages the sustainability of that system through health tourism, the export of pharmaceuticals and medical professionals to third countries. The chapter examines and compares healthcare in the United States to the system in Cuba, distinguished by health indicators and spending. For instance, despite spending one-tenth as much on health as the United States, Cuba ranks higher on the Healthiest Country Index. Another major difference is that Cuba considers universal access to healthcare to be a human right. The interview also looks at the benefits of U.S.–Cuba health cooperation as illustrated in the example of the lung cancer vaccine clinical trials at Roswell Park Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York.