Lessons from Building a Sustainable Healthcare Exchange between the Netherlands and Cuba

Paul Jonas (), Eduardo Garbey Savigne, Mark Koster and Imti Choonara
Additional contact information
Paul Jonas: Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Leiden University Medical Center, 2333 ZA Leiden, The Netherlands
Eduardo Garbey Savigne: International Relations Office, University of Medical Sciences of Havana, Havana 11600, Cuba
Mark Koster: Department of Primary Care, Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam Medical Center, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Imti Choonara: Department of Child Health, Derby Medical School, University of Nottingham, Derby DE22 3DT, UK

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 18, 1-9

Abstract: Over the past ten years, seven Dutch Universities have built a sustainable exchange with seven institutes in Cuban healthcare. The exchange was initiated by the Leiden University Medical Centre and the University of Medical Sciences of Havana. Cooperation with Cuba was chosen as Cuba has excellent primary healthcare and has a strong focus on prevention and public health. These were considered important due to the major contribution of non-communicable diseases to morbidity and mortality in the Netherlands. Exchanges have occurred with Dutch health professionals and students visiting Cuban healthcare institutions and Cuban postgraduate students studying in the Netherlands. There has been an increased awareness of the importance of public health and prevention in Dutch professional organizations following the exchange. The exchange has also helped to break the scientific and economic US blockade of Cuba and resulted in joint publications. In this review we described the process, key aspects, results and lessons learned in this process. Collaboration between Cuba (a middle income) and the Netherlands (a high-income country) is possible.

Keywords: international; medical; exchange; Cuba; public health practice; Netherlands; primary care; prevention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11742/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11742/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:18:p:11742-:d:917589

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().