Cuban doctors arrive in Italy to help fight COVID-19. / Credit/ theconversation.com /Matteo Bazzi/EPA
By Gary Raynaldo DIPLOMATIC TIMES
Cuba says it provides urgently needed medical care to impoverished people by dispatching doctors in overseas missions. The U.S. Trump Administration, however, accuses Cuba of engaging in “abusive and coercive” labor practices. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this week that the U.S. is expanding visa restrictions to Cuba’s medical missions. The expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program.
“Cuba continues to profit from the forced labor of its workers and the regime’s abusive and coercive labor practices are well documented. Cuba’s labor export programs, which include the medical missions, enrich the Cuban regime, and in the case of Cuba’s overseas medical missions, deprive ordinary Cubans of the medical care they desperately need in their home country. The United States is committed to countering forced labor practices around the globe. To do so, we must promote accountability not just for Cuban officials responsible for these policies, but also those complicit in the exploitation and forced labor of Cuban workers.”
-U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Cuba has dispatched medical doctors around the world since its 1959 socialist revolution and during the past decades the medical missions have been a source of urgently needed hard currency amid difficult economic times. “The US State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country,” said Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The medical brigades have also been sent to wealthier nations around the world recently following national disasters. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, Cuban doctors were dispatched to some 40 countries including Europe to fight coronavirus.
