HAVANA, Cuba – The Cuban government has sent a brigade of health professionals to four Caribbean islands to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those islands are Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica. As the coronavirus has spread to all CARICOM states, the help has been very welcomed by regional governments.
Cuba’s health authorities announced that new brigades of doctors and nurses with experience in handling critical situations are to arrive on the island between Wednesday and Thursday.
“We are aware that the current situation is difficult, but we are well prepared and ready to help save lives,” said nurse Orlando Borrero, who participated in the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone in Africa and was on two other solidarity missions in Nicaragua.
Over the past weeks, Cuba has sent health workers to various countries. On March 21, 140 Cuban health professionals including doctors, nurses and therapists arrived in Jamaica to assist the local health ministry. Another brigade was also sent to Italy, which is at the epicentre of the coronavirus, as the country with the second-most recorded cases and the most deaths.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department criticized Cuban solidarity by depicting it as an act motivated by political and economic reasons.
“Cuba offers its international medical missions… only to make up the money it lost… Host countries seeking Cuba’s help for Covid-19 should scrutinize agreements and end labor abuses,” the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs (DRL) tweeted.
