This report was produced by Knowledge@Wharton in collaboration with TTR Transactional Track Record.

Routinely touted as the greatest achievement of the Cuban Revolution alongside universal education, Cubas health care system has extended beyond the islands shores to represent one of the countrys biggest exports. Professional services carried out by Cuban doctors and nurses who number some 37,000 working in 77 countries are generating foreign exchange to the tune of $8 billion a year, Cuban officials say.

Cuban doctors and nurses are dispatched in medical brigades to far-flung countries ravaged by war and disease that are ill equipped to face humanitarian crises without external support, including earthquake-shattered Haiti and Ebola-stricken Liberia.

Cuban health workers are also sent to nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean that lack sufficient medical professionals to meet their own needs. These countries compensate Cuba with oil (in the case of Venezuela), good-will and cash. Venezuelas late president, Hugo Chavez, signed an agreement with Fidel Castro in 2000 to fund 43 medical centers in Cuba that attend to Venezuelan patients free of charge. Cuba, meanwhile, stations 31,000 medical professionals in the South American country and receives oil in return.

Cuba has a long tradition of training students from across the world in 16 medical schools scattered across the island. These students have typically been sponsored by United Nations programs or by their home governments, or are recipients of scholarships granted directly by the Cuban government. Even American citizens from low-income communities have been offered scholarships to study at Cuban medical schools, in exchange for a commitment to return to practice in underserved communities.

The nations medical facilities are, by and large, better equipped than hospitals in neighboring countries of the Caribbean, and

If there were any doubt about the level of training provided in the countrys medical institutions, foreign dignitaries dont share it; many frequently seek out Cuban doctors, some of whom are also professors at the countrys medical schools, to perform specialized procedures.

With modest investment, observers say, Cuba could attract more students and trainees from hospitals and managed care providers in the U.S.

Rodrigo lvarez Cambras, director of the International Orthopedic Complex Frank Pais on the outskirts of Havana, for example, was asked to operate on Saddam Husseins spine and treated Iraqs late leader over the course of nearly two decades. lvarez notes that U.S. policy is encouraging the same brain drain of Cuban doctors today as it did after the 1959 revolution, when about half the countrys 6,000 doctors fled. Despite the fact that the number of doctors on the island has multiplied more than tenfold since the start of the revolution, lvarez says he doubts Cuba will willingly supply medical professionals to the U.S. market as long as doctors from the country are being actively encouraged to defect under the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) Program.

The CMPP program was established in 2009 by the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security. It allows Cuban doctors, nurses, paramedics, physical therapists, lab technicians and sports trainers working in third-world countries to apply for U.S. entry simply by proving their Cuban citizenship and medical credentials at any U.S. embassy or consulate.

See more here:

How Cubas Health Care Sector Aims to Gain a Greater Foothold