Word: rico
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When Guillermo Arbona picked up his M.D. diploma from St. Louis University and returned to his native Puerto Rico in 1934, the island's death rate was 19.3 per 1,000, as against 11 per 1,000 in the continental U.S. Malaria and tuberculosis were rampant, along with the so-called tropical diseases caused by intestinal parasites. The island's annual health budget came to only $1.3 million-a mere 80? per capita...
Today, as Secretary of Health for up-by-the-bootstraps Puerto Rico, Dr. Arbona could proudly report that his island's death rate has been cut to 7.2 per 1,000, while the U.S. is only down to 9.4 per 1,000. Malaria has been completely wiped out. Tuberculosis has been cut to 5% of its former incidence, and intestinal parasitic disease to 10%. The health budget is up to $70 million, or 21% of total Commonwealth spending (only education takes more, with 31%). And much of the credit for improving the island's health goes...
...fixation that besets so many Latin American physicians. He resented the fact that in 1934 San Juan had 35% of the island's doctors while most of the communities had none. Working his way up through the Commonwealth's health department, Dr. Arbona spent years organizing Puerto Rico's scattered towns and villages into five medical regions, each with a modern medical center...
While he was inaugurating these improvements, Dr. Arbona relied heavily on the help of public-health experts from the mainland; now that Puerto Rico has become a showcase, it is Dr. Arbona himself who is in demand to give advice to other Latin American countries...
...tune of Frere Jacques: "Are you happy, are you happy?" Edward, a Negro first-grader, stared at his reader, eyes glazed-but he joined in when everybody sang, "Good night, room; good night, light; good night, window." Nicky, a third-grader whose family had just arrived from Puerto Rico, grunted only a few words in class: "Yes," "No," "Thirsty"-but he flailed his arms along with the others in pantomime to "Fly with the angels soon in the morning; fly with the angels in that land...