The Cuban Ministry of Health recently announced Cuba’s best-ever infant mortality rate. In 2004, out of every 1,000 babies born, only 5.8 died during their first year of life.

Cubans take a broader view of human rights than do many U.S. opinion shapers. The Cuban revolution took Jefferson’s words to heart about “certain inalienable rights … life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But numbers may be more persuasive than words in nailing down the case that in Cuba life itself is a human right.

Cuba’s 2004 IMR was second in the Western Hemisphere only to Canada’s rate of five deaths per 1,000 babies. The United States came in at seven deaths per 1,000. The average rate for all other Western Hemisphere nations was 36 per 1,000 babies, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO. Denmark, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Singapore and Sweden all achieved rates of under four deaths per 1,000. Cuba joins an elite group of 36 other countries with favorable IMR. All but Cuba, however, are wealthy, industrialized nations.

The IMR for African-American babies added up to 13.6 per 1,000, almost double the overall U.S. rate. The Cuban population mix, of course, includes 50 to 65 percent whose ancestry is African.

Health care, Cuban style, has to do with the preservation of life for all people. Cuba’s IMR in 1958, the last year before the revolution, was 65 deaths per 1,000 babies. Had that rate prevailed in 2004 when 127,062 babies were born in Cuba, 8, 255 babies would have died. Instead, only 748 babies died, almost all of them from lethal congenital defects and adverse conditions affecting babies in their mothers uterus.

In the United States, around 4 million babies are born every year. If by some magic Cuba could have shared its IMR with its neighbor to the north, then 4,800 babies who died in the United States would have survived. Had the Cuban rate prevailed in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2004, 30 babies out of every 1,000 would have lived, not died. The number of preventable infant deaths in Haiti is astronomical.

The World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization have repeatedly validated Cuba’s perennially low IMR. For more than 45 years, Cuba has worked to construct an environment conducive to healthy children.

The setting is of social justice. Parents in Cuba are educated, have jobs, food and decent housing. They have confidence and hope. Families know about preventative health care, caring for sick babies at home – especially those suffering from diarrhea – and the virtue of seeking help early from their family doctor or clinic. And care, both preventative and curative, is readily available. Health promotion has succeeded in Cuba because of people’s unified purpose and their readiness to organize for the common good. Intensive care units and specialty care for uncommon diseases are available but contribute relatively little to Cuba’s child health achievements.

The United States spends 13.8 percent of its gross national product on health care. Cuba spends only 6.8 percent of its national outlay on health care, yet babies there survive and thrive. Cuba, of course, has a special approach to money. Health care is for health and life. Cuba leaves profit and inflated salaries out of the equation, and the rest of the poor world is watching.

“The U.S. government is afraid to lift its blockade because it fears Cuba’s example,” says Foreign Minister Roque-Perez, speaking before the U.N. General Assembly in October. “It knows that we would demonstrate even more the possibilities of Cuban socialism, the potential not yet fully laid out in a country with no discrimination of any kind, with social justice and human rights for all citizens.”

A mere number, eloquent beyond words, makes the case. Social justice and human rights are matters of life and death – pure and simple.

Dr. William T. Whitney Jr. is a pediatrician and a member of Let Cuba Live. He lives in South Paris.

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