Toronto: Feature Documentary Screening about Cuba’s Health Care System: Salud! (2006)

Wednesday March 28, 2007
Health Sciences Building Rm. 208
155 College Street (at McCaul)
6:00-8:00 p.m.

Salud! illustrates how Cuba achieved its health outcomes and how its international cooperation plan has made a difference in countries including The Gambia, South Africa, Honduras and Venezuela. By working to establish a public health care systems based on a Cuban community-oriented, preventative and universal health care model, this documentary examines the motivations and challenges faced by Cuban doctors working internationally.

Through stories and testimonies from experts around the world, including international medical students studying in Cuba, Salud! examines the contradicting agendas and opinions that mark the battle for global health.

“For 40 years, Cuba's taken it to the road, their doctors in demand by other struggling nations. Cuba's volunteer corps now posts 28,000 health professionals in 68 countries. Cuban medical schools enrols 30,000 students from other developing areas, an unprecedented undertaking for any country. The film probes the motivations of international students at Havana's Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) where a bold paradigm shift is producing doctors committed to public service. Through these stories and testimony from experts around the world, ¡Salud! traces the opinions and competing agendas that mark the battle for better global health.”

Reviews on the documentary:

“¡Salud! shows us that, regardless of economic constraints, health for all is possible when government intelligently applies basic principles and makes a healthy citizenry a top priority."

Georges Benjamin, MD, FACP, Executive Director
American Public Health Association (APHA)

“¡Salud! is compelling, upbeat and moving, a great tool for learning the much there is to learn from Cuba." Paul Farmer, MD, Partners in Health and Harvard Medical School

About the Director:

Producer/Director Connie Field has worked on numerous dramatic and documentary films, as well as independently producing her own work. “Connie Field is a recipient of the John Grierson Award as most outstanding social documentarian, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the founder and president of Clarity Films (www.clarityfilms.org). Her most recent endeavor, Have You Heard From Johannesburg? (2006), a documentary series on the global effort to end Apartheid in South Africa, was awarded Best Documentary Feature by the National Film Board of Canada at the 2006 Vancouver Film Festival. http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/behind-the-lens.html

This screening has been organized by the Health Promotion Diversity/Anti-Oppression Committee and the PHS Social Justice Committee.