How to Cite
Abstract
This article explains how the Cuban Revolution managed to build, starting from the disadvantaged situation of a small southern country lacking natural resources – and under US sanctions – a comprehensive, universal, effective, and free public healthcare system (Section 1). It then examines the origins and development of the local pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries (Section 2), as well as the main players in medical research and their recent advances (Section 3). It then presents Cuba's international medical cooperation (Section 4) and its internationalist health missions (Section 5). It also analyzes the measures adopted on the island by health authorities against the COVID-19 pandemic (Section 6) and, finally, the uniqueness of the health and medical research systems within the framework of a socialist society (Section 7), as well as the problems they face, largely attributable to the US embargo (Section 8).
Cuba; Socialism; Healthcare; Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry; Public Service.
The work is published under a Creative Commons License - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0): this allows others to share the work acknowledging the intellectual authorship and the first publication in this journal.
Authors keep the rights to their work and give the journal the right of first publication.