On Thursday I spent the evening on Hampstead Heath with a group of people brought together by an organiser in Medact. We met to sit in the sun, share a picnic and discuss Che Guevara’s speech to recruits of a new post-revolution training program at Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health. On revolutionary medicine, is both specific to a time and place, and timeless in it’s analysis of how society defines, creates and sustains health or, more often, fails to do so.
Che was born premature, had pneumonia as an infant, and suffered with difficult to control asthma throughout his life. He had extended periods off school when his mother would home-school him. Rather than accept chronic illness, Che looked for ways to support his body to heal. He altered his diet, fasted, and pushed himself to be physically active outdoors. He adopted the principles of Lifestyle Medicine intuitively and saw the benefits, years before the evidence base would catch up and I would complete a diploma with the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. Che’s personal experiences heavily influenced his later vision of a Cuban health system, but he wisely saw the limits of individual action, and the need for a collective community-based approach to health.
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