Challenging Poetry

Cuba: a thought

we bleed doctors into
the world.

they learn that doctors
are more than their tools,
because here, they starve
for supplies,
so that when the call comes
(which it will) that a struggling
nation needs our help,
our doctors only
want to help, and in
the middle of Africa
where they struggle to find a clean
place to treat patients who
die in ooze and filth,
they marvel
at the essential drugs
(they wanted them,
over and over) we cannot give them.

and so our older doctors bleed away,
and our younger doctors grow like
dandelions, strong and
never dependent,
and always drifting away.

line count: 24

Author's Note ▶︎

What struck me in my research on Cuba was that they have an excellent health care system that focuses on helping individuals with a multiple tiered system of doctors responsible for the health of the community (like a neighborhood doctor who has a contact with a five neighborhood doctor who is connected with the hospital--at least that's what it sounded like). They have more doctors per capita than just about any other nation in the world (that's from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba
At the same time, this health care system struggles because they don't pay their doctors very well and they are limited in the amount of supplies that they receive. Facilities tend to be older and out of date; equipment as well. Some essential drugs have a difficult time entering the country and being properly distributed. As someone with T1 diabetes, I'm not sure I'd want to live there because I'd be afraid of some mix up in the insulin supply.
This has a couple of direct results. First, doctors leave Cuba. They provide more doctors to developing nations than G8 nations combined (Wikipedia again). And when they get there, they are trained in making do with very little, so they approach health care in an innovative way.