 MIAMI (Reuters) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro has long prided himself on Cuba's doctors and free public health care system, but that system seems to have let him down after he fell ill in July , U.S.-based doctors said on Tuesday.
| Health care in the socialist paradise let El Jefe down? |
| I'll be the first to mix up a pitcher of mojitos when the old goat kicks, but Israel's vaunted medicos let Ariel Sharon down as well in his hour of need. It sux to get old and sick. Now stabilize already, Fidelito. |
Based on a report in Tuesday's edition of Spain's El Pais newspaper, the doctors -- who have no first-hand knowledge of Castro's condition -- said Castro had received questionable or even botched care at the hands of health experts on his communist-ruled island. "It's not a good story. Too bad they didn't send him to Miami for surgery," said Dr. Charles Gerson, a clinical professor of medicine in the gastroenterology division of New York's Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.
| Ouch, ouch, ouch. Even Miami's big public hospital, Jackson Memorial, would have provided far better care than anything Castro would have received in Havana. |
According to two medical sources cited by El Pais, the veteran revolutionary was in "very serious" condition after three failed operations on his large intestine for diverticulitis, or pouch-like bulges in the intestine, complicated by infection.
| Ahah! Sepsis! Sacrificing a goat works every time, almost... |
|