Speaking of shortages?
Doctor Shortage Getting Worse
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100546118
Maybe Cuba will loan us some. :0) They have more doctors per capita than anywhere on earth.
Education and healthcare
Since 1959, Cuba has carried out a genuine education revolution. Illiteracy and educational backwardness were chronic social problems prior to 1959. The first and greatest of revolutionary Cuba’s achievements in education was the abolition of illiteracy, which stood at 23% in 1958. A mass literacy campaign, led by 280,000 volunteers teaching some 100,000 students, eliminated illiteracy in just one year.
Not long after, free education was established for all Cubans. From preschool to PhD, free education was guaranteed both in the Cuban constitution and in practice, with the socialisation of the cost of tutoring, books, pencils and pens.
Cuba now has more teachers per capita than any other country in the world.
Before 1959, the vast majority of Cubans had very limited access to health care. The capitalist elite had their private physicians but the poor had only a handful of rundown hospitals, and medicines were mostly unaffordable.
In the countryside it was even worse; health care was virtually non-existent. The revolution established health care as a basic right of all Cuban citizens, making it completely free for every Cuban. It established a new ethic in health care — not for profit, but for service to the people.
According to the Word Health Organization (WHO), life expectancy in Cuba is now 78 years — 76 years for men and 80 years for women. In comparison, the US life expectancy at birth is 75 and 80 years for males and females respectively. In 1959, average life expectancy in Cuba was just 58 years.
At the end of 2008, infant mortality in Cuba was 4.7 deaths per 1000 live births, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. Infant mortality in the US is 7 deaths per 1000 live births.
According to the WHO,
Cuba has 5.91 physicians per 1000 people, twice as many per capita as the US. In fact,
Cuba also has more doctors per capita than any other country in the world. In 1959 there were only 6300 doctors, most of whom soon left for the US. Today Cuba has 70,000 doctors; 30,000 abroad and 40,000 resident in Cuba. There are some 90,000 Cuban students currently studying to work in health care. Cuba is training — free of charge — 76,000 foreign students in medicine.
Cuba also has a flourishing biotechnology and pharmaceuticals industry. It has developed a vaccine for meningitis B and exports the world’s best hepatitis B vaccine. It also developed the first synthetic vaccine for pneumonia prevention.
Not only does it look after its own people, but the Cuban Revolution exports its world-class health care to other poor countries. In 2008, 36,500 Cuban doctors were sent to 81 Third World countries to provide health care to people who would otherwise not have received it. This is a greater number of doctors than is provided by the WHO or by all of the rich countries to the Third World.
The Cuban government has also entered a health care “joint-venture” with the Venezuelan government, called Mission Miracle. The aim of Mission Miracle is to eliminate blindness. Patients fly free of charge to Cuba where they receive a free eye operation. The vision of more than one million Latin American and Caribbean people has been restored through this program.
http://directaction.org.au/issue8/cuban_revolution_50_years_of_accomplishments
:0) just sayin'