...as we are usefully reminded here:
Although every person and every people has the right to a healthy life and to enjoy the privilege of a long and useful existence, the richest, most developed societies, ruled by consumerism and a thirst for profit, have made the health service into a common business, inaccessible to the poorest sectors of the population. In many Third World countries this service barely exists, and between developed countries and the euphemistically called 'developing countries' the differences are vast.
While statistics speak of developed countries with child mortality rates lower than 10 for 1000 life births, and some boast a life expectancy that reaches or surpasses 80 years of age, others, such as many African countries, have to settle for child mortality rates of over 100 for children under one year of age and often 150 for 1000 life births, and a decreasing life expectancy rate that in some countries fluctuates between 30 and 40 years of age. While the world watches this happen, military spending amounts to one trillion dollars every year, a figure only comparable to one other absurd expense, that is, commercial publicity, which also equals one trillion. Either of these sums, invested wisely year after year, would be more than enough to ensure that all the people of the world lived a decent life.
Neither the climate nor genetic potential are causing this tragedy. Cuba, a tropical country, with a hot and humid climate, a favorable environment for viruses, bacteria and fungus, whose population is a mixture of ethnicities, subjected to a cruel blockade and economic war for almost half a century, has, despite all this, an infant mortality rate of less than 6 for 1000 life births under one year of age, a rate that falls just below that of Canada, and is headed towards 5 and maybe even less than 4 in the near future, which will put Cuba in first place in the continent. Furthermore, it will take our country half the time it took Sweden and Japan to raise life expectancy from 70 to 80 years, as it today stands at 77.5 years of age. Its medical services have increased this expectancy by almost 18 years, from a rate of approximately 60 years at the time of the triumph of the Revolution in January 1959.
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