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Cuba expects up to 80 years to prolong the life expectancy of its population by 2015, two more than at present, thanks to its free health model with emphasis on prevention, an official reported.


Deputy Minister of Health, Joaquin Garcia, said that "Cuba is a medical power", while acknowledging shortcomings in the hospital infrastructure and the salaries of doctors who suffers the sector, despite being a showcase for the achievements of the communist model of the island.


Currently health care is free and indicators are often compared with those of developed countries, including the life expectancy of 78 years and an infant mortality of 5.3 per 1,000 live births.

Cuba has half a million health workers and 72,000 of them are doctors, Garcia said when making a balance sheet for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution.


In 1959, the island was virtually without doctors because most migrated to the United States after the triumph of the revolution. But since then, health is part of the essence (ideological) of the revolution "and thus ruled out a change that characterizes the free system.

On the external front, the deputy minister stressed that, to date, 36,500 Cuban specialists working in a hundred States to develop social plans there as Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay and Haiti.


Cuba also operates the Latin American School of Medical Sciences in 9600 where foreigners are poor and 6,500 more graduated from the center opened 10 years ago.

He also mentioned the 1.3 million surgeries performed in 32 countries with "Operation Miracle, a program initially agreed in 2004 between Cuba and Venezuela to cure problems of the hearing.


Garcia regretted that in these 50 years the sector suffers sanctions by Washington against Havana, and that cost him between 1998 and 2007 2.200 million dollars.