Cuba offers free medical school | The Compost Bin | Forums

I didn't know this, pretty cool, I probably would have tried taken advantage of it if it was around when I went to school

WHEN SARPOMA SEFA-BOAKYE, who grew up in southern California and went to UCLA, heard she could go to medical school in Cuba, she thought it must be a joke. Not that it existed—she met Cuban doctors while studying abroad in Ghana, so she knew about the country’s robust healthcare system. What was unbelievable was the cost.

“I called the office asking how much the program cost, how much the application fee was. They were just like ‘Free, free,’” says Sefa-Boakye. “How can it be free?” But indeed, the Latin American Medical School—ELAM, in Spanish—is free, charging no tuition, room, or board. In 2002, she packed her bags for Havana.

Sefa-Boakye is one of over 100 Americans who have gone to the school. Cuba established it in 1999, after the country sent hundreds of doctors to help neighboring countries hit by hurricanes. The school is an extension of that medical diplomacy: ELAM caters specifically to low-income students from outside Cuba, who come learn for six years and return to serve their communities.

Does this sound like a way to spread Cuba’s ideology—you know, propaganda? Sure, maybe. But for some American students, the school’s draw is free tuition. Others comes specifically because of Cuba’s ideas about healthcare, including its emphasis on community medicine. At a time of ballooning health costs, the US might learn a thing or two about that.

Consider Cuba’s medical system, which punches far above its weight. The country’s GDP per is just one-tenth of the US’s,1 and it lacks access to drugs and equipment thanks to the US trade embargo. But life expectancy in Cuba is actually just above that of its northern neighbor. How? By focusing on preventive medicine for everyone under a national healthcare system.

That means the doctor-patient relationship in Cuba is very different. “The primary care physician lives where they work. Their home is typically above the clinic,” says Brea Bondi-Boyd, a 2009 ELAM graduate who is now a family care physician at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in California. She recalls doctors making house calls, doing public health surveys in their neighborhoods, and even looking for stagnant pools of water during dengue season. In short, doctors in Cuba take on the unglamorous work of public health.

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