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Giant and Dwarfnot the United States of America and it is not the entire European Union put together. It isa country that many in Central Europe and North America would have a hard time hearingany positive references to, but from an intellectual point of view, it simply would be a graveerror to not mention it in a book about Africa and development aid. The country is a smallCaribbean island with the same population as the Czech Republic or Hungary, 11 millionstrong Cuba.6,000 Cuban doctors left Cuba after the revolution in 1959, with most leaving to theUSA. 45 short years later, in 2005, Cuba had 70,000 doctors and another 25,000 studentsenrolled in medical schools. An unbelievable 30,000 Cuban doctors had at that point intime already worked in medical missions around the globe. This fact is so unbelievable andhard to digest for some that they have written it off as Communist propaganda. Othersdoubt the quality of these Cuban doctors. The facts speak for themselves and the AmericanCIA, which would indeed have a difficult time viewing Cuba with a sympathetic eye, hassaid that Cuban life expectancy is 77.7 years (the precise term is “life expectancy at birth”)with child mortality rates in Cuba at 4.9 per 1,000 live births. 167 For comparison purposes,an average Slovak can expect to live 75.8 years and child mortality rates are 6.6 deaths per1,000 live births. Life expectancy in the super-rich USA is 78.4 and the child mortality ratethere is 6.06 per 1,000 live births. It quickly becomes apparent that the Cuban healthcaresystem is exceptional. It is highly unlikely that it would achieve better results in these keyhealth indicators than Slovakia and fully comparable parameters in the USA if it did nothave doctors of the highest quality. Just as an aside, the CIA did in fact confirm their highnumbers when it published that there were 6.4 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants (data from2007). In Slovakia we have just less than half that number, 3 per 1,000 inhabitants, whilethe wealthy USA only has 2.7 per 1,000 inhabitants.Fidel Castro’s dream, for some equated to the devil and a despot and for others a heroand humanitarian, is to have 100,000 doctors for Cuba by 2015 and to educate another100,000 for developing countries by that time. 168 The domestic goal of Cuba’s healthcaresystem is clearly defined and completely logical: in the coming years, the goal is to increasethe average life expectancy among Cubans to 80 years. It is also to provide medical aidanywhere it is needed in the world.When a destructive earthquake struck parts of northern Pakistan in October 2005,killing 80,000, the first 85 Cuban doctors arrived in Islamabad 48 hours after the disaster.Eventually more than 2,500 trauma specialists, surgeons, general practitioners andother healthcare professionals were working in the 30 field hospitals Cuba provided, fullyequipped with equipment and drugs and in refugee camps, in mountain villages and Pakistan’sown field hospitals and regular hospitals. Cuban health units worked for six monthsin the destroyed mountainous areas of Pakistan, staying on until the end of the brutalwinter in the country’s highest peaks.167 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html. Accessed on 2011-10-08.168 Ramonet, Ignacio: Fidel Castro. Životopis pre dva hlasy. Bratislava: Ikar, 2007.182