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About Cuba
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EDUCATION
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Education has enjoyed a favoured place in the Cuban
government's development priorities; it is free at all levels and
compulsory to grade nine. In addition to the country-wide primary
school system with sufficient capacity for all Cuban children, Cuba
has 2,174 high school level institutions and 47 higher learning establishments.
Government statistics indicate that there is one teacher for every
37 inhabitants; expenditures on education in 1989 were reported at
C$1.7 billion.
There are approximately half a million students beyond grade nine
attending school under government scholarships, including some 20,000
foreign students from Asia, Africa and Latin America. In addition
to having nearly 100 percent literacy, Cuba has approximately one
million technicians, technologists and university graduates in its
labour force.
About 1.3 percent of the GDP is devoted to research and development;
there are some 180 technical and scientific research centres employing
over 30,000 researchers. |
HEALTH
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Public health has also been a high priority sector for
the Cuban government since the late 1950s. As a result, the Cuban
population enjoys one of the highest life expectancies at 75.2 years,
and one of the lowest infant mortality rates (9.7 per 1,000 live births).
The country has a total of 35,000 medical doctors, or one per 300
inhabitants. The health system is free and accessible to all Cubans
through 421 polyclinical centres, 267 hospitals and some 1,500 medical
centres spread across the island.
Cuban medical facilities perform sophisticated interventions, including
organ transplants (kidney, heart, bone marrow, corneal, liver, pancreas,
etc.)
Other social services available to the Cuban population include sickness,
maternity, and work-injury benefits and old age, disability, and survivors
pensions. |
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Excerpted from the book "Doing Business with
Cuba", written by Fred D. Bloch and Prof. Constantino Torres,
Faculty of History, Havana University, and published electronically,
Copyright © 1997.
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