FROM a distance they look like the brochures found in hotels anywhere in the world. You know the ones . . . offering day trips to beaches, museums, waterfalls and the like. But the picture alters dramatically on closer inspection.
Instead of pictures of bikini-clad girls spread out on powder-white sand, we have doctors and nurses clustered in an operating theatre; where we expect tourists gaping at the wonders of Mother Nature, we see a man going through the rigours of a brain scan; and instead of a group of people gathered around a work of art, we have patients testing out new artificial limbs.
There are glossy brochures of the Ibero-Latin American Centre for Transplant and Regeneration of the Nervous System, Orthopedic Hospital Frank Pais, Centro Internacional de Restauracion Neurologica, Centro Internacional de Retinosis Pigmentaria, Centre for the Treatment of Drug Addiction, the Placental Histotherapy Centre, and a host of others each explaining what they have to offer.
Spending six weeks in a tropical paradise having your kidney replaced, or schizophrenia or impotency treated may not be everyone's idea of a great time away from home, but in Cuba, the 'health travel' business is booming.
Any ailment, from executive stress to infertility, to brain surgery can be catered for in a country which, even though economically devastated, still prides itself on its quality of health and medical care.
Cuba is a Third World country known for its excellent health-care system, so what better way to make a buck than to exploit that expertise? Its economy has suffered as a result of the United States' 35-year-old trade embargo, and the break-up of the Soviet Union, which once accounted for 80 per cent of international trade, has exacerbated matters.