EYEWITNESS CUBA: HEALTHCARE FOR ALL
Featuring Laurena White, local student at
Havana's Latin American School of Medicine
speaking and presenting a screening of'Salud!'
widely-hailed movie about some of the thousands
of Cuban doctors delivering free care in
some 67 countries across the Third World.
Thursday November 1st at 7pm
Calvary United Methodist Church
48th & Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia
1) Laurena White is in her fourth year of living
in Cuban neighborhoods and delivering
community healthcare. This is a unique
opportunity to get first-hand information from
Cuba, given Washington's travel ban
preventing Americans traveling there and
Cubans coming to the United States.
2) 'Salud' is a U.S.-made film by Oscar nominee
Connie Fields ('Rosie the Riveter' and 'Freedom
on My Mind'). Accolades include:
"Salud! is an excellent, accurate and
deeply moving portrayal of a healthcare
system designed to keep people healthy
rather than the 'sickcare' system that
currently exists in the United States."
Joycelyn Elders, MD, former U.S.
Surgeon General
"I salute Salud! for teaching us how
much we can learn not just about - but
from - Cuba."
Julian Bond, Chairman of the Board,
NAACP
"Salud! is compelling, upbeat
and moving, a great tool for learning the
much there is to learn from Cuba."
Paul Farmer, MD, Partners in Health
and Harvard Medical School
"Salud! is a powerful film whose time has
come. It's essential to those seriously
working for a national health insurance
program in the United States: it shows
what is possible when the focus is the
patient, not profits."
Quentin Young, MD, National Coordinator,
Physicians for a National Health
Program
Please join us for this special event.
Thursday November 1st at 7pm
Calvary United Methodist Church
48th & Baltimore, Philadelphia
Event is free.
Please circulate to your friends and
lists.
Sponsored by the Philadelphia Cuba
Solidarity Coalition
Philly@CubaSolidarity.com
484.431.0182
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2 comments:
Hey there Philly health bloggers,
Greetings! As y'all are fellow Philadelphians, I thought you'd be interested in attending a medically oriented event at Penn's Kelly Writers House next Tuesday. Hope to see you there...
Here's the press release, if you could help spread the word that would be wonderful!
Join Word.doc in welcoming Dr. RAMSEY THORP (Penn Medical Alum, author of "The Laying on of Hands") to the Writers House next Tuesday, 11/6 at 6PM.
Dr. Thorp has spent much of his career interested in the doctor-patient relationship. For a humanistic perspective on how to care for patients and allow them to be in control of their medical lives, please join us
on November 6th!
WH Staff
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Word.doc presents:
Penn Medical Alum & Author
Dr. RAMSEY THORP
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Tuesday, 11/6 at 6PM
3805 Locust Walk
This event is free & open to the public
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DR. RAMSEY THORP was born in Philadelphia in 1936. The grandson of a surgeon and son of a pediatrician, he sought a career in medicine. He received a degree in liberal arts at Wesleyan University and his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After two years in the Navy as a Flight Surgeon he returned to Penn for residency in internal medicine and eventually ophthalmology. In 1970 he opened his practice in the
northwest suburbs of Philadelphia where he still practices today. Concurrent with his practice, he has continued to teach at Penn in the
Department of Ophthalmology. His primary focus has been basic
ophthalmology for medical students. Dr. Thorp is affiliated with the
Chestnut Hill Hospital where he has served as Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, President of the Medical Staff, President of the Hill IPA, and member of the Board of Trustees of the Chestnut Hill Hospital.
He has also served on the School Committee for Germantown Friends School and as President of the Wissahickon Skating Club. Dr. Thorp has recently authored "The Laying on of Hands," a book dedicated to the doctor-patient relationship.
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EXCERPTS from an article published in the Chestnut Hill Local, 2005…
Dr. Thorp has been a Clinical Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School since the early 1970s. As a teacher, he finds himself talking a lot about the "Golden Age of Medicine"of which his father and grandfather were a part. He hopes that his young students won't find his ideas antiquated. ""They [medical students] are so sophisticated,"" he says.
"In The Laying on of Hands," Dr. Thorp writes perhaps it is not cool in today's brisk, efficient society to foster the concept of caring. Caring can be viewed as soft and hazy in terms of our daily
functioning. All of us prefer to believe that we are in control of ourselves." Yet it is Dr. Thorp's goal to enable his patients to be in control of their medical care through his attention and caring. …
For Dr. Thorp states that medicine is a family affair. Both his father and grandfather were medical doctors. His wife, Beth, is a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, and two of his three sons went into medicine; one is an internist and the other a veterinarian.
Dr. Thorp never even considered another profession. ""My dad was a
god-like figure to me,"" he said in his office last Friday, surrounded by photographs of his family. He admired his pediatrican father's relationship with patients. In order to gain the trust of children, Dr. Thorp's father would leave the room when shots were administered. Then he would lead the patients and their parents into his office, where he would smoke a pipe and thoughtfully discuss the diagnosis. He was careful not to act distracted or busy. It would seem that the most important thing in the world to him was that one child.
As his father's office was in the front of the house, Dr. Thorp was witness to such interactions. He carried his father's doctor-patient philosophy with him through medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, through his military service as a flight surgeon during the Vietnam War and then his residence in ophthalmology.
The Vietnam War also influenced Dr. Thorp's doctor-patient philosophy– leading him to a humanist view of medicine. ""The Vietnam War made us want to be more human,"" he says.
For Dr. Thorp, a humanistic doctor is interested in caring for the patients and for the disease, but also in the context of their lives."
"It is necessary," Dr. Thorp says, "to look beyond simply the diagnosis."It is here that his philosophy clashes with our modern commodity culture. People are looking for quick-fixes,"and doctors are trained to specialize, so there are very few holistic cures.
Dr. Thorp leans forward excitedly and says that 60 percent of medical symptoms have no organic basis. That means that variables like environment, eating habits and job stress affect our health far more
than viruses or accidents. Yet doctors are not encouraged to study the whole patient." General practitioners refer their patients to specialists, who treat the patient's foot, ear, or eye but may not know the context of the patient's life.
I'm not sure how Cuba manages to provide the health care that it does, but the Democratic candidates seem to be trying to distance their plans from those of the British & Canadian plans as much as possible.
Really -- what are the real difference between existing real-world national health care systems and Democratic promises? Why should I be assured that American bureaucracy will be better providing heath care than anyone else ever has?
I've posted what I hope are some good tough questions about the Democratic health care plans. It would be great to get some good answers:
http://libertydesirebelief.thechartersofdreams.com/2007/11/smarter-better-than-the-britis.html
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