A decade ago I lectured to the staff of the Ministry of Health in Cuba. After my talk the Minister happily said, this graphs showed that Cuba is the healthiest of the poor countries! On the way out a young staff member whispered in my ear:
– He is wrong, Cuba is just the poorest of the healthy countries.
Gapminder World describes that both were right, www.bit.ly/l02EOP People in Cuba has the same life span as Chile, Portugal, South Korea, Greece and USA. But Cuba has the lowest income per person of all these countries with Life Expectancy of 79 years! Is Cuba´s upper left position due to good health policy or bad economic policy? I would say YES due to both reason, and now it seems as the new leader is fed up with the bad economic policy and starts to allows some privet enterprises in Cuba. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/05/17/cuba.private.businesses/index.html
Hans Rosling