List of approved Cuba health insurance providers

List of approved Cuba health insurance providers

As of this posting, this is the tentatively approved list of Cuba health
insurance providers that is now mandatory for all visitors to Cuba
starting May 1.

Belgium
ELVIA-BRUSELAS
EUROP ASSISTANCE
EUROCROSS
INTER ASSISTANCE
MONDIAL ASSISTANCE

Brasil
ASSIST-CARD
CORIS
EUROCENTER
MONDIAL BRASIL
WORLDWIDE ASSISTANCE EUROP ASSISTANCE

Canada
ACM
ASSURED ASSISTANCE
CANASSISTANCE
DESJARDINS (SIGMA-ASSISTEL)
FOX FLIGHT
GLOBAL EXCEL
HEALTH INSURANCE DIVISION
ICMS-WORLDWIDE EMERGENCY ASSIST (TORONTO)
JOHN INGLE INSURANCE
KEEWATIN AIR
MAGNUS POIRIER
MEDICAL SERVICES ASSOCIATION
MONDIAL ASSISTANCE
POLTRUTT & SMITH
SIGMA ASISTEL
SKY SERVICE-FBO INC
WORLD ACCESS, CANADA
WORLD TRAVEL PROTECTION
WORLDWIDE MEDICLAIM

Chile
ASSIST-CARD
MONDIAL ASSISTANCE
SUR ASISTENCIA (MAPFRE)

Colombia
ANDIASISTENCIA
ASSIST-CARD
CORIS COLOMBIA
PANAMERICAN ASSISTANCE
COSTA RICA
ASSIST-CARD

Czech Republic
ELVIA

Denmark
EURO ALARM
INTERNATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE
NORDIC INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE
SOS INTERNATIONAL

England
ACIA-SEA CLAIMS = ANGLO CARIBBEAN INSURANCE
AEA INTERNATIONAL – SOS ASSISTANCE
ALPHA ASSISTANCE
ASSISTANCE 2000 – PRIMARY ASSISTANCE
ASSISTANCE INTERNATIONAL
CEGA
CIGNA
COOPERATIVE FUNERAL SERVICE
EUROP ASSISTANCE
FIRST ASSIST
GREEN FLAG
HACIA
IAS = INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE SERVICE FIRST SERVICE
INTERGROUP ASSISTANCE SERVICE
INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL RESCUE
KENYON AIR TRANSPORTATION
MEDEX ASSISTANCE
MERCURY INTERNATIONAL ASSIST
MONDIAL ASSISTANCE
ROWLAND BROTHERS INTERNATIONAL
SFA
SOS INTERNATIONAL
THOMAS COOK
TRAVEL PROTECTION
WORLDWIDE ASSISTANCE

Finland
EMA EMERGENCY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE
EUROOPPALAINEN INSURANCE

France
CGS
FIDELIA
FRANCE ASSIST
FRANCE SECOURS INTERNATIONAL
GESA PARIS
INTERFUNE
INTERMUTUELLE ASSISTANCE
MEDIC AIR INTERNATIONAK
POMPES FUNEBRES GENERALES

Greece
EUROP ASSISTANCE
MAFRE

Holland
ANWB
ELVIA ASSISTANCE
EUROCROSS
OHRA
SAS ALARM SERVICE
SOS INTERNACIONAL

Hungry
EUROP ASSISTANCE

Italy
ACI GLOBAL – SPA
AIDE ASSISTANCE
CORIS
ELVIA ASSISTANCE (MADRID)
EURA MILAN
EUROP ASSISTANCE
FILO DIRETTO
ITAL ASSISTANCE (AIDE)
MONDIAL ASSISTANCE
SFA
WAY CALL

Japan
EUROP ASSISTANCE
SFA

Mexico
ASSIST-CARD
AXA – GESA ASSISTANCE
EUROP ASSISTANCE
GLOBAL LIFE FLIGHT
MAS MEXICO - MMC MEXICO
MÉXICO ASSISTANCE
PANAMERICAN ASSISTANCE

Panama
PANAMA ASISTENCIA – MAFRE

Peru
ASSIST-CARD

Poland
CORIS VARSOVIA
ELVIA
ELVIA POLONIA
EUROP ASSISTANCE

Portugal
AIDE ASISTENCIA
COMPAÑÍA PORTUGUESA DE SEGUROS DE ASISTENCIA
ELVIA PORTUGAL
EUROP ASSISTANCE

Puerto Rico
AERO AMBULANCE

Russia
ACCORD LIMITED
BAO INTOURIST
GLOBAL VOYAGEUR ASSISTANCE
INTERMAR LIMITED
SOS INTERNATIONAL

Singapore
WORLDWIDE ASSISTANCE

South Africa
EUROP ASSISTANCE

Spain
B.I. ASSISTANCE
CAP ARAG
CORIS
FUNESPAÑA
IBERO ASSISTANCE
RACC
RACE ASISTENCIA
SOS ASSISTANCE MADRID
MAFRE
WINTERTHUR

Sweden
SFA

Switzerland
ELVIA SUIZA
EUROP ASSISTANCE
MEDICALL
ZURCÍ VERSICHERUNGSGESELLSCHAFT

United States
AIR AMBULANCE PROFESSIONALS
EUROP ASSISTANCE INTERNATIONAL (LOS ANGELES)
MEDEX
MERCURY INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE
MONDIAL ASSISTANCE
MONEY GRAM
NATIONAL JETS
NATIONAL AIR AMBULANCE
ON-CALL INTERNATIONAL (IAG)
USA ASSIST-DEMOCRACY CENTER
WORLD NET
WORLDWIDE ASSISTANCE SERVICES (WASHINGTON)

http://havanajournal.com/travel/entry/list-of-approved-cuba-health-insurance-providers-402a/

DHL toes party line in Cuba

Posted on Saturday, 04.03.10
BEST OF BLOGOSPHERE

DHL toes party line in Cuba
From Yoani Sánchez's Generación Y blog in Havana:

Acouple of years ago I went to the DHL office in Miramar to send some
family videos to friends in Spain. The clerk looked at me as if I were
trying to send a molecule of oxygen to another galaxy.

Without even touching the Mini DVD cassette, she told me that the Havana
branch only accepted VHS. I thought it was a question of size, but the
explanation she gave was even more surprising: ``It's just that our
machines to view the content only read the large cassettes.''

When I tried to insist, the woman suspected that instead of the smiling
face of my son, I wanted to send ``enemy propaganda'' abroad.

Frustrated, I returned home -- where I have never received a piece of
regular mail -- and some time passed before I again had need of the
services of this German company.

Faced with the impossibility of traveling to Chile to present my book,
Cuba Libre, a few days ago, the publisher sent me 10 copies in a single
package marked ``express.''

Neither my numerous telephone calls to the office at the corner of First
and Calle 26, nor my physical presence there, managed to make them
deliver what is mine. ``Your package has been confiscated,'' they told
me, even though in reality they should have been more honest and
confessed that, ``Your package has been stolen.''

Although these are the same texts that, without descending into verbal
violence, have been published on the web for three years, the customs
censors have handled it as if it were a manual about how to make Molotov
cocktails.

Now, when headlines around the world are announcing the end of Google's
collusion with Chinese censorship, foreign companies located in Cuba
continue to obey ideological filters imposed by the government. With its
airs of efficiency, its tradition of immediacy, and its phrases such as,
``We keep an eye on your package,'' DHL has agreed to apply a political
filter to its customers.

To refuse to do so would earn it expulsion from the country with the
consequent economic losses, and so the company ignores the sanctity of
the mail and looks the other way when someone demands what belongs to them.

The red and yellow colors of the DHL corporate identity never seemed too
strident to me. Looking at them today I feel that instead of speed and
efficiency they represent a warning: ``Not even with us is your
correspondence safe!''

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/03/1561118/dhl-toes-party-line-in-cuba.html

Cuban aviation scandal highlights growing corruption problem

Posted on Saturday, 04.03.10
Cuban aviation scandal highlights growing corruption problem
A scandal involving Cuban officials taking profits from government
aircraft flights hints at Raúl Castro's lack of control.
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

A corruption scandal whispered about in Havana involved Cuban government
aircraft being used for off-the-books flights, with profits going to
Cuban officials, according to the British Broadcasting Corp.

``In Cuba they say that under socialism, everyone owns the means of
production, a principle that apparently was taken literally by some,''
the BBC correspondent in Havana, Fernando Ravsberg, wrote Thursday.

Word of the scandal has been swirling around Havana and the blogosphere
since the March 8 dismissal of Civil Aviation Minister Gen. Rogelio
Acevedo, a long-time revolutionary, although Cuba's official news media
has not reported on the case.

The BBC'S Ravsberg was the first professional journalist in Cuba to
write about the scandal. He cited unidentified ``people at the airport,
customs, transport and travel agencies'' as his sources on his BBC
webpage, Cartas Desde Cuba.

Cuba-watchers said the corruption reflected a lack of control by Raúl
Castro's government, and showed that even top government officials no
longer embrace the austerity and selflessness that the revolution once
required.

``Twenty years ago this simply did not happen,'' said Alina Fernandez, a
Miami radio commentator and daughter of Fidel Castro. ``You can't keep
people in ideological formaldehyde. The revolutionary credo was
abandoned a long time ago.''

Ravsberg, who has been the BBC's reporter in Havana for several years,
wrote that each new detail he learned about the scandal was ``more
mind-boggling than the previous one.''

Airplanes owned by the government's Cubana de Aviación airline ``sold
space clandestinely to Latin American companies to transport their
merchandise from one country to another, and the directors pocketed all
the money,'' he reported. They even sent planes to transport goods.

When they wanted more money, he added, ``they started to report that one
or another plane was under repair in Canada, when in reality it was
transporting passengers in other places.''

``Their entrepreneurial ambitions were such that they apparently decided
to buy some small airplanes to compete with Cubana de Aviación. The
first purchase would be in Mexico, and the airplane cost several million
dollars,'' Ravsberg wrote.

State Security agents are now interrogating ``a lot of people'' at the
notorious Villa Marista detention center in Havana, Ravsberg said, and
there are reports that each day more functionaries have been arrested as
a result of the confessions of the first ones detained.

Ravsberg, wrote that the corruption scandal, though larger than most,
``was not an exception but rather the rule.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/03/1561116/cuban-aviation-scandal-highlights.html

Teaching Twitter in Havana

Teaching Twitter in Havana
Students squeeze into blogger's living room to learn about Wordpress,
Wikipedia and the digital revolution.
By Nick Miroff
Published: April 2, 2010 06:57 ET

Yoani Sanchez sits with her computer in her apartment in Havana, Oct. 3,
2007. Sanchez runs a Blogger Academy out of her living room. (Claudia
Daut/Reuters)Enlarge Photo

HAVANA, Cuba — As an educational institution, Cuba's Blogger Academy
suffers from a few notable deficiencies. Its six-month course doesn't
grant an accredited degree, and its single, cramped classroom — the
living room of founder Yoani Sanchez — isn't even hooked up to the internet.

Then there's the possibility that the next knock on the door might be
the police. They haven't shut down the Blogger Academy yet, but on this
web-starved island — the least-connected country in the hemisphere —
this classroom is a place where the digital revolution really feels like
one.

At least the 30-odd students squeezed onto benches and chairs in
Sanchez's 14th-floor Havana apartment see it that way. They're taking a
risk to come here twice a week to learn how to use Twitter, or write
code in Wordpress for their own blogs. That's not because those software
programs are illegal in Cuba, but because Sanchez, 34, is considered
dangerous company.

Sanchez remains largely unknown on the island, where her award-winning
blog, Generation Y, is blocked. But she has a huge following among
Cubans living abroad, and she has used her literary talents and the
power of the internet to become a potent symbol of opposition to a
one-party socialist system run by men in their 70s and 80s. With the
Blogger Academy, where the instructors are volunteers and tuition is
free, Sanchez is drafting others to the digital cause.

"Today we're going to talk about Twitter," Sanchez began on a recent
afternoon, quieting the room. The students ranged in age from early 20s
to mid-50s. One's man late father had been a leader of the Cuban
Revolution. Given the Castro government's record of infiltrating
opposition groups, it was also likely a few of the students were there
to take notes on their classmates, not their coursework.

No one seemed too worried about that, though, and the atmosphere was
friendly, almost festive. Sanchez used a projector to cast an image of
her laptop screen onto the wall, displaying web pages she'd saved from
the last time she was able to use the internet. Like most Cubans, she
isn't allowed to have an internet connection at home but can pay to go
online at hotels and cyber cafes. "Who can tell me the difference
between tags and categories?" she asked the class.

There were other classes that day on journalism ethics, photography, and
Wikipedia. A nearby table was stacked with photocopied handouts of
articles with titles like "Can Journalism be Participatory?" and a
Twitter manifesto called "The revolution in 140 characters." Students
huddled to share the room's few laptop computers.

At most journalism schools, it would be ordinary subject matter. But on
an island where the media is almost entirely state-controlled and less
than 1 percent of the population has an internet connection, it seemed
like the first tremors of a paradigm shift.

Cuban authorities, meanwhile, see it as little more than a new phase of
an old fight. They view Sanchez's rapid rise to international fame as
part of the broader U.S.-funded campaign to foment anti-Castro activity
on the island. Sanchez insists she funds the academy and supports other
bloggers with the money she's earned by publishing articles and a book
abroad.

"We're not trying to challenge or subvert the government," Sanchez said
in an interview. "This isn't a political party. There's no boss here,
and no director. No one is telling us what to write, or what type of
criticisms we can make. We're just trying to create a virtual world that
reflects the variety of views that Cubans really have — but are now
suffocated and hidden by government controls."

Rosa Miriam Elizalde, the editor of the pro-government website
Cubadebate, said she views Sanchez as a figure who has been hyped up for
a specific political purpose — to attack Cuba. Elizalde said there was
nothing wrong with the material taught at the Blogger Academy, but she
said Sanchez's goals were hardly apolitical.

"You can't criticize learning," Elizalde said. "But you can criticize
the intention behind her efforts, which are taking place in a framework
of a U.S. policy of subversion and aggression."

Elizalde also questions the international support Sanchez receives to
run her blog, which is translated into 18 languages. "We're not talking
about some blogger in Sweden," Elizalde said. "We're talking about a
blogger in Cuba, which the United States has been waging economic and
political warfare against for the past 50 years. And this is just the
latest form of that warfare."

Several of the academy's students say they've faced more than criticism
in recent months, receiving threats and other forms of harassment from
the government. A few said their computers and cell phones had been
confiscated by state police.

"There are people who think I'm doing something wrong by coming here,
but I don't think so," said Regina Coyula, 53, a housewife and former
Cuban state security agent who now writes a blog, Mala Letra (Bad
Handwriting), launched with Sanchez's help.

"I think I'm giving a voice to a lot of people who think like I do,
whose views aren't reflected in the official media," said Coyula. "We're
people who want change, and we want the current government to be an
instrument of change."

Sanchez said the academy's graduates are developing the skills to shape
Cuba's future media organizations. Blogger Orlando Luis Pardo described
their one-room school with a quote from famous Cuban novelist Jose
Lezama Lima, likening it to "building a cathedral in the air."

"Somehow this is the image that I have," Pardo said. "Something very big
and very beautiful that we are trying to build, and very fragile also,
that could crumble to the ground at any time."

"We hope not," he said, "but it's something very fragile.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/cuba/100401/blogging-twitter-sanchez

Latino Celebrities Rally For Cuba Rights

Latino Celebrities Rally For Cuba Rights
Written by Alessandra Alma

Last Sunday, several celebrities rallied in Los Angeles and across the
country in support of the "Las Damas en Blanco." Las Damas en Blanco are
a group of women en Cuba who have silently protested the incarceration
of political dissidents since 2003. The women protest by wearing white
dresses to mass on Sundays and walk silently through the street to
protest the imprisonments. The group was recently attacked by Cuban
police, which created an uproar from Cuban exiles in the United States.

The Los Angeles rally was led by actor and musician Andy Garcia who was
joined by celebrities George Lopez, Rosario Dawson and Perez Hilton.
Rallies also took place in New York and Spain. The rallies were
organized to support a a rally led by Gloria Estefan on March 25th in
Miami, who was joined by her husband Emilio as well as singers Pitbull,
Willy Chirinos and Luis Fonsi.

http://mylatinovoice.com/politics-and-us/24-politics/1657-latino-celebrities-rally-for-cuba-rights.html

Students' protest against Cuba continues

Students' protest against Cuba continues
By Mahtab Bashir

ISLAMABAD: A goodwill gesture by the Cuban government offering
scholarships to around 1,000 Pakistani medical students has become a
nightmare for a few.

Despite clarifications of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), the
fact remains there that whether Pakistan Medical and Dental Council
(PMDC) will accept Cuban medical degrees. Talking to Daily Times, the
six students deported from Cuba shortly alleged that the Cuban colleges
were ill-equipped and quality of education lower than Pakistan.

They said they would not be able to get past the PMDC test if and when
they completed their studies and obtained degrees. They claimed that
teaching hospitals were not attached with their colleges in Cuba.

These six were among the 15 students were arrested for violating laws in
Cuba. They and their parents have staged a protest in front of Higher
Education Commission (HEC) building in Sector H-9 in favour of their
demands.

The HEC has issued a press release stating that a comprehensive
certificate, addressing all issues, was signed by the Cuban deputy
minister for health and endorsed by the PMDC representative, who went to
Cuba for resolution of this matter.

A total of 932 Pakistani students are currently undertaking medical
studies in Cuba on full scholarship. The first batch of these students
has completed two years of study along with a comprehensive course in
Spanish language and is ready to initiate third-year classes, while the
second batch has entered second year of study. The case for resolution
of the problems faced by these Pakistani students in Cuba was taken up
by the Senate Standing Committee on Health and National Assembly
Standing Committees on Health and Education. Both these committees
worked deliberated on the issue.

A delegation headed by Senator Nilofer Bakhtiar and including
representatives of PMDC and HEC went to Cuba in February to work out a
solution. They inspected classrooms, teaching facilities, laboratories
and living area of students during their stay in Cuba.

Tahir Abbas Zaidi, HEC project director, said it was clarified that
Pakistani students in Cuba were studying in WHO-recognised institutions
and, upon successful completion of their degrees, would be recognised as
doctors by Pakistan. The ELAM will issue degrees, not certificates, to
these students, which were recognised by the HEC.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C04%5C02%5Cstory_2-4-2010_pg7_26

Cuba Still Mum on Travel Insurance

Cuba Still Mum on Travel Insurance
April 1, 2010
By Circles Robinson

HAVANA TIMES, April 1 — Cuban tourism and health authorities continue to
keep potential visitors to the island in the dark about a new travel
insurance requirement that takes effect on May 1.

It was announced several weeks ago that visitors, including Cubans
living abroad, must either possess a travel health insurance policy with
a foreign company approved by Cuba or purchase coverage from a Cuban firm.

Most Havana Times readers agree that a tourist should have health
insurance for any treatment needed as a visitor to Cuba, that's not the
issue. However, a lack of information has some people reconsidering
their vacations to the island.

The concern is over the lack of information about what foreign companies
will be approved and/or the logistics and expense of buying a Cuban
travel policy upon arrival. These details have not been forthcoming,
creating uncertainty in a competitive tourism industry market.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=22369