Both are provided free of charge to Cubans from all walks of life, the number of doctors per capita exceeds that of nearly every country in the world, if not all, and Cuban doctors are sent abroad to work in some of the most needy, isolated places on earth. In education, illiteracy levels have been reduced to 0.1%, better than both the USA and Canada and Cuban teaching methods are being adopted in other Caribean and Latin American countries.
Now revolutionary Cuba has another success story to tell the world about. It is being hailed as a shining example of how to combat HIV/AIDS. Today, Cuba has an HIV infection rate of less that 0.1% - in a region that has one of the fastest growing infection rates in the world (The Chronicle Herald, August 6, 2004). This has been accomplished despite the 40-year old US economic embargo against Cuba, when the US wouldn't sell the needed anti-retroviral drugs to Cuba. So Cubans did it themselves. By 2001 Cuba had a growing biotechnical sector able to manufacture generic versions of several HIV/AIDS inhibitors, all of which are now available to patients free of charge. This, coupled with a mandatory program of education of 6 to 8 weeks duration for HIV infected people (compared to about 5 minutes in the USA) has enabled Cuba to bring this terrible disease under control. And it doesn't stop there! Cuba has sent thousands of doctors and nurses to almost any part of the world to help in the struggle against HIV/AIDS.

For a small country, which still has not escaped its economic third world status to provide such leadership in the struggle against one of the most feared illnesses in the world surely puts all the rich nations to shame. They are apt to criticise Cuba for its human rights record at every opportunity, but in the end, actions speak louder than words.

3) The Republican Party in the USA has nominated an outright racist candidate to contest a congressional seat in the state of Tennessee, so reports The Guardian of August 7, 2004. James Hart won the nomination with no less than 82% of the votes cast, despite the fact he was too late to get his name on the ballot and had to stand as a write-in candidate.

According to The Guardian: " The local newspaper described his views as "odious, disgraceful, and racist".
On his website Mr Hart, who calls himself an "intellectual outlaw", is an enthusiastic promoter of eugenics. He refers to "favoured" and "less favoured" races and calls for an increased birth rate among couples with a university education. He conducted his campaign wearing a protective vest and carrying a pistol.
Despite the security measures, and losing his job on Wednesday because of the attention he had drawn during the primary contest, he claimed that the voters had given a sympathetic hearing to theories of race associated with Hitler.
When I knock on a door and say white children deserve the same rights as everybody else, the enthusiastic response is truly amazing," he said. He does not say that when an African-American opens the door".