The international recognition of the achievements of the Cuban health system, the stability -questioned on some occasions - of health indicators, and the enormous human resources and materials invested to develop the policies and national sanitary strategies comprise an excellent field to analyze the epidemiological contribution to those positive results in the health area. Among those outstanding results, the longer life expectancy, the low mortality rates, infant mortality, and mortality due to infectious and parasitic diseases partly due to the elimination or eradication of a group of diseases preventable by immunization. Were these results reached by an epidemiologically oriented health system? Do the procedures carried out allow for the proposal of a Cuban School of Epidemiology? The objective of this paper is to offer answers to these queries through a critical appraisal on the presumable epidemiological orientation of the health system, and the incorporation of epidemiological thinking in the sanitary strategies that have been designed and developed in Cuba. An arbitrary, but notorious dichotomy, the Seminar on the "Uses and Perspectives of Epidemiology", held in Buenos Aires in 1983, has traced rules for the epidemiological performance in the Region as a whole and contributed to the analysis above. The dichotomy -before and after the Seminar - created the national scenarios for practicing epidemiology at the academic, investigative and health services levels, supported on 4 basic pillars: political will, an organized and conscious community, accessible health system, total coverage and broad financing, and highly qualified human resources. The health system went through four stages whose description - including healthcare models, development strategies, epidemiological activity and training - provides the means to recognize its presumably epidemiological orientation, and its link to the different schools of thought prevailing during each stage. Another important aspect on the theme is the proposal of a Cuban School of Epidemiology, and the assessment carried out, specifying the distance between the ideal thing and the real thing, because a "school of thought" does not seem "to be built by sum of well-known actions, if not, for overwhelming contributions that may re-formulate the discipline itself, and consequently reorient practice." In conclusion, a certain gap between the theoretic argument and the epidemiological practice in the National Health System is recognized. Consequently, its epidemiological orientation has been limited. The challenge the situation represents to reach the epidemiological leadership that is promoted in the discourse is unavoidable, and for this reason, health reform appears as an excellent and timely opportunity.
Epidemiology; Health system; National strategies; Health manpower; Health planns and programmes; Health policy
