Gail Reed

Organ Donation & Transplants in Cuba: Promising Results, Challenges Ahead

Organ and tissue transplantation extends a lifeline to patients across the globe. But access to this therapy of last resort is restricted by many barriers: access to health care in the fi rst place, particularly to such high-tech procedures, limited by inequities in geography, gender, race/ethnicity or economic status, among others. Access is further infl uenced by health system organization; its human and material resources; cultural norms and religious beliefs; corruption and organ traffi cking; and degree of public education, social cohesion and political will of governments.

Charting the Course to Universal Health in the Americas: Cristian Morales PhD, PAHO/WHO Representative in Cuba

After leaving Chile during the Pinochet era, Dr Morales studied economics, health administration and international health at the University of Montreal. But his baptism in the field came in Haiti, where he was first PAHO advisor to the health ministry, and then for five years was responsible for human resources and health economics in the PAHO offices in the capital of Port-au-Prince. He was at his post during the flooding in Gonaïves, five hurricanes, the 2010 earthquake and the ensuing cholera epidemic-doubtless the most dramatic and complex times for the countrys health in recent history. Before becoming the PAHO/WHO Representative in Cuba in 2015, he was Regional Advisor in Financing and Health Economics based in Washington, DC. In that role, he plunged into the often thorny debates about just how far governments of the Americas were willing to go towards achieving universal health-universal coverage plus universal access. The result was a historic resolution passed in late 2014 by PAHOs Directing Council (CD53.R14 Strategy for Universal Access to Health and Universal Health Coverage). Dr Morales talks about the process, the outcomes… and the road ahead.

Revolutionizing gender: Mariela Castro MS - Director, National Sex Education Center, Cuba

Although we are all of the same species, we are a “sexed” species. But that isn’t the end of the story: we also need to analyze the historical and cultural constructs built upon birth-assigned sex, which produce either wellbeing or discomfort, depending on how the assigned sex is lived from the point of view of power relationships. These are gender relations, and they are the basis for inequity, discrimination and inequalities.