Speech #900309388

International medical journals. and interviews with some hundreds of exiled medical personnel. the study says that infant mortality has increased sixfold over the past 7 years and that public health in every other area has deteriorated at an equally catastrophic rate.. The study blames the deterioration in public health on "the debasement of civil authority." the swollen military budget--which takes $256 million a year against a top figure of $55 million before Castro came to powerand the total lack of concern over public health services. The report quotes from the testimony of recent refugees who have worked in the fields of medicine and dentistry. Let me quote here only a few paragraphs from the testimony of Jose Antonio Guethon Lahera. a male nurse who. until March 1968. was in charge of the laboratory in the Santiago de Cuba General Hospital in Oriente Province: "Out of every 100 tests made for hepatitis." said Sr. Guethon. "30 per cent were positive in 1966. in 1967. 33 per cent were positive. between January and March of 1968 40 per cent were positive.