By: Ewan Robertson, 10/20/2013

How should the healthcare needs of a society be met? Conspicuously absent from international media coverage and under fire from conservative critics at home, Venezuela is developing a public healthcare system distinct from both U.S. market-driven and European welfare-state models. Perhaps nothing makes this system more unique than the kind of doctors being trained to run it.

The first remarkable thing to note about Venezuela’s comprehensive community medicine program is how little is known about it outside of Venezuela. The attempt to train tens of thousands of aspiring doctors in Cuban-style preventative community medicine, the majority of these new physicians from lower-income backgrounds, has merited next to no attention from the international mass media. Compared to issues of crime, inflation and sporadic shortages in the economy, for these outlets the effort to create an “army of white jackets” to make the vision of a free, universal healthcare service with clinics in every neighbourhood a reality is seemingly not of importance for understanding Venezuela today.