Photo: @CubacooperaGh /  telesurenglish.net/  Cuban doctors have been sent to several countries around the world to help fight the coronavirus

By  Gary Raynaldo      DIPLOMATIC TIMES

Cuba has sent medical brigades to combat COVID-19 in Italy as the  death toll soars past 6,000 in the European nation.  Cuba announced on Sunday that the team of 37 doctors and nurses were sent to Italy after the worst-affected region, Lombardy, asked the island-nation for immediate assistance in helping them fight the coronavirus. The coronavirus pandemic has overwhelmed the health infrastructure of countries around the world. It is the first time Cuba has sent an emergency contingent to Italy, one of the world’s richest countries, demonstrating the reach of its “medical diplomacy.”   The Cuban doctors and paramedics will join the dozen Chinese doctors who arrived in Milan and who will be sent to a new field hospital in Bergamo, the Lombard province most affected by the new coronavirus.  Cuban collaborators are already working with the same purpose in Venezuela and Nicaragua, responding to the request of the governments of both Latin American nations.

#AlJazeeraEnglish #Coronavirus #Cuba   Cuban doctors head to Italy to fight coronavirus

Cuban Medical Diplomacy Is Crucial Source of Currency For Socialist Government 

Cuba currently provides medical cooperation in 37 countries that report COVID-19. This is nothing new, as Cuban physicians are already known around the globe.   Since the 1960s,  Cuba’s  doctors and medical specialists have provided multiple  developing nations badly need health care.   Cubans deployed 37,000 doctors in 77 countries, as of 2015 according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.  Medical services comprise Cuba’s largest  export, bringing in some  $6.5 billion   — twice as much as tourism — in 2018. 

U.S. Trump Administration Pressures Latin America Nations To Expel Cuban Doctors

The US Trump administration mounted a campaign earlier this year against  Cuban doctors working abroad in Latin America, which have led to the expulsion of the medical missions from several countries, including Bolivia and Brazil, where left-wing governments have been replaced by right-wing regimes closely aligned with Trump and Washington.  US secretary of state Mike Pompeo characterized  the deployment of Cuban doctors in countries from Venezuela to Brazil and Ecuador as intentional interference in their affairs.  Critics say the  Trump administration’s campaign against the doctors, which includes attempts to persuade them to defect, is little more than an attempt to choke off the amount of foreign revenue that they bring back to  Cuba.