Export health care not guns (From South Wales Argus)

Export health care not guns

2:42pm Friday 1st March 2013 in Letters

APART from defending our own immediate health needs there are other reasons to keep the NHS public and to protect it from the cutbacks and privatisation maniacs.

We could, with a left wing government, be planning for a publicly owned production and care base for the NHS that could meet the nation’s health needs and export health products, expertise and techniques to the benefit of the people of this planet. This would secure and maintain millions of jobs. Instead of exporting terror, torture equipment and bombs, we could be exporting specialists, respirators, painkillers, counselling techniques and medical manuals to train doctors abroad. This is possible, as has been shown by the people of Cuba despite the US blockade on items from aspirin to heart stents and sanitary towels. Cuban health workers are sent to every international disaster to provide medical relief. Instead of being a nuclear-armed superpower, we could become a medical superpower. If the Cuban people can do it, why can’t we?

David Llywelyn Brown Branch Secretary, Newport and Valleys Branch Communist Party