!Salud!

Ever since I watched the Buena Vista Social Club, I wondered what makes Cuba's citizens lead a long, healthy life despite their obvious poverty. Watch a clip of Candela, Candela and you may get a sense of what I am talking about. The old singers are setting the concert hall on fire with their energy.




This documentary gave me an answer to that question.

!Salud! -- Spanish toast meaning "your health" and one of the few words I know in the language.

Film Synopsis: !SALUD! looks at the curious case of Cuba, a cash-strapped country with what the BBC calls "one of the world's best health systems."

From the shores of Africa to the Americas, !Salud! hits the road with some of the 28,000 Cuban health professionals serving in 68 countries, and explores the hearts and minds of international medical students in Cuba -- now numbering 30,000, including nearly 100 from the USA.

Their stories plus testimony from experts around the world bring home the competing agendas that mark the battle for global health and the complex realities confronting the movement to make health care everyone's birth right.


Pipa's Note: Also read Doug Starr's Senseless Crackdown on Cuba