So advanced is Cuba's national health system, in spite of the strictures of poverty and a US economic embargo, that a child born there will live a longer healthy life than a poor child born in the world's richest country. Even a nation as wealthy as Britain is sending doctors and scientists to study how the island country does it.
According to a June report of the World Health Organisation, a newborn infant can expect to live a healthy life of 68.4 years in Cuba, the best rating in the whole of Latin America. Raw life expectancy is 74 years for men and 76 for women, on par with most industrialised nations.
When the revolution triumphed in 1959, Cuba's mortality rates matched many other places in the developing world, with a life expectancy of 48 years for men and 54 for women.
Cuba's health system is also entirely free. There is no health insurance, private and public, as all conditions and needs are automatically covered. Because of its reliance on community-based care, health provision is also extremely cheap: approximately $20 per head per year.
Keen on learning the secrets of its success, officials of the British National Health System and 100 GPs are on the island, touring its facilities and meeting with their counterparts.
Many were very impressed with what they saw. Patrick Pietroni, a dean of postgraduate general practice at London University, who led the visit, told the British Guardian, "What we can learn is how they have managed to produce these healthcare statistics which are sometimes better than ours at 1% of the expenditure. They have more family doctors, who are better trained than our GPs.
"When we went to Cuba what was so impressive were the three-storey buildings called consultorio. The ground floor was the practice, the first floor was the doctor's flat and the second floor was the nurse's flat. No Cuban lives more than 20 minutes or so from one of these."
Cuba also has far more doctors, drastically lowering doctor-patient ratios. Cuba has 30,000 GPs, the same number as Britain, but has only a fifth of the population. There is one family doctor per 500 to 700 people in Cuba, compared to one for 1,800 to 2,000 in Britain.
Cuba has 21 medical schools, but Britain has only 12. Cuba has 37,000 practice nurses, Britain just 10,300.
According to Cuba's Prensa Latina agency, reporting on October 3, Cuba has been nominated to represent the American continent on the board of the World Health Organisation. The nomination, made unanimously by the 45 member-country Pan-American Health Organisation, is a recognition of the country's stature in the health services field.
BY SEAN HEALY