Hacker News Reader

I'm curious why you put the word doctor in quotation marks, as if to imply they are substandard.

It was always my understanding that while Cuba lacks a lot of things that many other countries take for granted, that the quality of its doctors was outstanding. I even remember seeing this mentioned in the newspaper at the beginning of the pandemic.

Is this not true, or no longer true? Have I been under a false impression for all this time?

View on HN

I visited Cuba with a doctor and we took a couple of drunk tourists to the hospital. I also met another doctor who went to a medical conference there. Overall, their conclusion was that Cuban doctors are legit, but their medical system is very primitive.

> Is this not true, or no longer true? Have I been under a false impression for all this time?

Annecdotal evidence, but an acquintance of mine (who is an MD) encountered Cuban "doctors" in South America and wasn't impressed at all.

> I even remember seeing this mentioned in the newspaper at the beginning of the pandemic.

The thing is that Cuba made a lot of claims about their handling of the pandemic, but as with every communist country out there it's hard to really know what's really going on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com