Raphael John-Lall

Na­tion­al co­or­di­na­tor of the Cuban Med­ical Brigade in T&T, Dr Or­lan­do Lazaro Díaz Gómez is as­sur­ing the pub­lic that Cu­ba is will­ing to pro­vide med­ical pro­fes­sion­als when the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Cen­tre is opened.

The Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion Gov­ern­ment, in 2015, opened the $1.6 bil­lion Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal. How­ev­er, af­ter be­ing vot­ed out that same year, the build­ing was not com­mis­sioned.

Af­ter win­ning the re­cent gen­er­al elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the hos­pi­tal will be used for the pur­pose it was orig­i­nal­ly built for and will have its orig­i­nal name.

“At present we have the cur­ricu­lum vi­tae of 44 doc­tors and 124 reg­is­tered nurs­es wait­ing in Cu­ba with the will­ing­ness to pro­vide the to­tal and the nec­es­sary per­son­nel to open all pae­di­atric ser­vices in the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal be­cause every­one knows that the Min­is­ter of Health has de­cid­ed to open Cou­va as a pae­di­atric hos­pi­tal and we have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide the hu­man re­sources in or­der to sup­port that idea,” Díaz said.

He spoke at a we­bi­nar en­ti­tled Cuban Med­ical Co-op­er­a­tion Un­der Threat: A Caribbean Re­sponse host­ed by the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Val­sayn.

He said in Ju­ly 2003, the Cuban and T&T Gov­ern­ments signed an agree­ment that paved the way for med­ical co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries.

Over the last 22 years, 770 Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have worked in T&T un­der 10 dif­fer­ent med­ical brigades.

At present, there are Cuban 96 med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in T&T - eight doc­tors and 88 nurs­es.

Di­az said they are cur­rent­ly await­ing the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion on whether the Cuban pres­ence in T&T will be in­creased.

He al­so gave sta­tis­tics about how the Cuban Med­ical Brigade has im­pact­ed the lives of T&T na­tion­als.

“There have been more than 700 med­ical con­sul­ta­tions, more than 15,000 sur­gi­cal in­ter­ven­tions, more than 6,000 lives have been saved. More than 10 mil­lion nurs­ing pro­ce­dures that in­clude more than 45,000 cures and more than 40,000 dos­es of vac­cine have been ap­plied.”

On his vis­it to the Caribbean in March, US. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, who is the son of Cuban im­mi­grants, ac­cused the Cuban Gov­ern­ment of em­ploy­ing Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als us­ing “forced labour” in their over­seas mis­sions.

Díaz de­fend­ed the work of Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es in T&T and glob­al­ly say­ing that they are well trained and abide by the labour laws in the coun­tries where they work.

“The Cuban col­lab­o­ra­tors start work here for three years un­der the em­ploy­ment con­tract with the op­tion to be ex­tend­ed by two years and so they can com­plete five years,” he ex­plained.

“They work un­der the con­di­tions set by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO). They re­ceive the same salary as a health­care pro­fes­sion­al each in their own Re­pub­lic Bank ac­count. They are ap­prised an­nu­al­ly of their per­for­mance and they are af­ford­ed va­ca­tion af­ter 11 months of work.”

Cuban Am­bas­sador to T&T Gus­ta­vo Veliz Oli­vares who al­so spoke at the event al­so re­pu­di­at­ed claims by the US Gov­ern­ment that the Cuban med­ical work pro­gramme vi­o­lates hu­man rights.

“The pres­ence of the Cuban Med­ical Brigade in the Caribbean has been on one of the main com­po­nents of the bi-lat­er­al re­la­tions with the Cari­com coun­tries. Cu­ba does not ex­port doc­tors, we of­fer our ser­vices. All Cuban health tech­ni­cians who joined these brigades have done so freely and vol­un­tar­i­ly, with­out any form of co­er­cion. They are not slaves.”