Cuban eye surgeons leave, government that threw them out complains

Martinelli administration, unprepared for the consequences of its actions, alleges Cuban malpractice

Cuban eye surgeons leave, taking records with them
by Eric Jackson

On January 5, the Cuban medical brigade that had been performing cataract operations and other eye surgery at the Hospital Luis "Chicho" Fábrega in Santiago learned from press reports that Minister of Health Franklin Vergara had announced a government decision to shut down Operacion Milagro, a program that had came to Panama in mid-2007 after having treated many Panamanians in Cuba since 2005. When they learned that they were to be thrown out of Panama, the Cuban team was on a holiday break, having performed their last surgery on December 23 and having 22 more operations scheduled for when they planned to get back to work in mid-January.

Very typically of the Martinelli administration, no replacement program was in place, nor was there a budget appropriation for any such thing. The Panamanan government quickly announced that the Cubans would be staying on until April 30 --- and the Cuban government and its medical brigade in Panama learned that from press reports, too.

The Cubans stopped examining patients and performing operations, packed their things and left. On February 2, Cuba's deputy health minister greeted the last of the Cubans to leave Panama, a group of 16 ophthmologists, at the airport in Havana.

Vergara roundly denounced the Cubans for leaving abruptly, complaining that there were patients waiting for surgery. The Cubans offered to transport the patients to Cuba to have their operations there at no cost.

Vergara told La Critica that in the private sector, it costs $900 per eye for ophthalmic surgery, while it cost the Cubans $1,700 per eye. He denounced the Cubans for taking the medical files of their work back home with them, claiming among other things that this prevents his ministry from performing an audit to determine how much it cost the Cubans to do their operations.

(The Panamanians who got eye surgery? The service was free to them.)

Vergara added that by taking the files with them, the Cubans whom he would have had stay on for a few more months proved that they were committing malpractice.

These, however, were not the first Panamanian malpractice charges lodged against the physicians of Operacion Milagro. On behalf of the Ophthamologists Association one Dr. Maritza López Moreno, head of that organization and daughter of the Martinelli administration's Customs director, Gloria Moreno de López, sued to stop Operacion Milagro back in 2007. Her charge was malpractice, that the Cuban ophthamologists were unqualified. How so? Because they were not properly licensed in Panama. Why not? Because they were not Panamanian.

The Supreme Court threw out Dr. López's lawsuit and some 45,000 Panamanians got free eye surgery.

The Martinelli administration now argues, as did the Ophthamologists Association before, that Panama has well qualified eye surgeons who can do the job. And now that the market price, which has gone down since the Cubans began working here two and one-half years ago, is down to $900 per eye, the small farmer whose monthly income might reach $300 --- if one counts those chickens she raises and crops she grows for family consumption in monetary equivalents --- still can't afford it. The medical skills available in Panama never were in question. It was a matter of economics: neither the public health care system nor the private market provided for the poor whose eyesight could be saved or restored by surgery.

And so who is going to be the head of Vision 2020, the program that the Martinelli administration says will replace Operacion Milagro, when and if they ever get a budget? That would be Dr. Maritza López Moreno.

There is no medical or economic reason behind the cancellation of Operacion Milagro. It's all about Ricardo Martinelli's boast that he's "the anti-Chávez" --- a right-wing mirror image of the Venezuelan president --- who pursues a right-wing foreign policy.

But can Vision 2020 be a mere return to the situation before Operacion Milagro came to Panama? It could be, but that would be a terrible political defeat for Martinelli. Look for him to find a way to claim with a straight face that his administration is doing for poor Panamanians with bad eyes --- from working in the sun without eye protection or otherwise --- what the Cubans were doing for them when he took office.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story ophthamologist Dr. Ivonne Matute de Martinelli was confused with first lady Marta Linares de Martinelli.

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