The Cuban Doctor Pays a Visit

St. Augustine's Catholic Church in Barrio Temporal is a pretty odd place for a Cuban outpost in Bolivia. But so it goes.

It is midday here in my neighborhood and the sun is brutal hot. A short line of local women, most looking to be in their mid to late 50s, is waiting at a small side door to one of the church's tiny classrooms. I know this classroom. It is where both my older kids prepared for their first communion (We're in Bolivia, someone in the family has to be Catholic).

Today the room is occupied by a visiting doctor from Cuba, Doctora Maita, a serious woman who I guessed to be in me late 30s. She tells me that she's been here eight months and likes Bolivia.

All through the weekend the local neighborhood organization was passing out flyers for "Operation Miracle" which at this moment is focused on offering free eye exams and free surgeries for anyone diagnosed with either cataracts or certain other operable eye problems. Judging from the line yesterday, and a stream of visits that lasted from 8am to 6pm, local interest was high.

"If you need an operation it will be free," Christian Cruz, head of the local neighborhood association, tells the women and men who come by. "If you need glasses it will be free."

There is one catch however, to get the surgeries my neighbors will need to travel four hours by bus to Villa Tunari, a small town in the middle of Cochabamba's Chapare jungle region. Operation Miracle tried to get clinic space in Cochabamba, but to no avail. The project needed a loan of three rooms for three years – one for reception, one for doctor visits, and one to set up for operations.

"The doctors here just want to make money," Cruz complains. I also expect it was just easer for the Cubans to set up in one place and Villa Tunari – a tourist destination that is also hub to a region of rural poverty – probably wasn't a bad pick. It also, coincidently, is the political hometown of Evo Morales' MAS party and the government is a key backer of the Cuban doctor program.

"I have a problem in this eye," a young Bolivian soldier tells Cruz and I through a chain link fence as he passes by. "It keeps looking at all the girls."

"Be careful," I warn him, "I think the Cubans might spread it to the other eye as well."

Much uproar has been made in Bolivia and in the foreign press, these past few months, over Cuban doctors coming here to offer free care. Medical quality isn't the issue. A lot of Bolivian doctors have studied in Cuba and the island of Fidel is also a popular destination for members of the Bolivian middle class seeking high quality care.

But up on the hillside near my home, politics was not an issue. "I have had two surgeries on this eye and neither of them worked," a woman with cataracts tells us. She took a number and joined the line, hoping that maybe Doctora Maita might help her do better.