Cuba has sent brigades of doctors around the world for 60 years. With the Covid crisis, we have seen Cuban doctors land in much richer countries, such as Italy or the French overseas territories. The UN recognizes their work, but also criticizes the conditions in which they work and Human Rights Watch considers them “modern slaves”. The journalist Maïlys Khider has just published “Cuban Doctors. The armies of peace.”
Cuba has 11 million inhabitants and 100,000 doctors. Many of them spend several months abroad. A program that already has 60 years of history and that began in 1963 in Algeria. Later they would also go to Angola, Congo, Bolivia, Brazil, Haiti, Liberia, Venezuela to assist in wars, crises, catastrophes, epidemics.
The export of health services represents the main income of foreign currency for Cuba, ahead of remittances and tourism. The Cuban National Statistics Office published a report stating that the country had collected 6.4 billion dollars in 2018.
Mailys Khider began to be interested in Cuban doctors working abroad during the first confinement in 2020. This independent French journalist, member of the collective ExtraMurosPress, she read an article that surprised her about sending Cuban doctors to Italy to help care for Covid patients, which revealed the fragility of European health systems in the face of a pandemic. And it is that even the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, recognizes that 62% of its 33 member countries They suffer from staff shortages in the health sector.
“There are many medical deserts in Europe, in rural areas, for example in France and also in Italy, which is why they called Cuba,” he explains. The question of why a rich country asked Cuba for help was what led her to travel to the island to investigate and learn about the history of these doctors. It was in 2021, coinciding with the demonstrations due to lack of food and in July.
There he met with several Cuban doctors who had gone to missions abroad. “There are doctors who go on adventures when they are younger and who want to travel. And there are doctors who go on a mission to earn more money because much more money is earned abroad, ”he explains in Escala in Paris.
Cuban doctors, alone against Ebola in Libera
The role of these doctors has been very important in very tense situations, such as the one experienced in 2014 with the Ebola epidemic in Africa. An experience that is collected in the book through the testimony of Juan Jesús Alemán.
“Technically they had been prepared in Havana before going to Liberia. But one thing is the theory and then the situation upon arrival. According to what he told me, they arrived at a place where the doctors had left out of fear, that there were 100% deaths, they had to set up emergency tents and work in very difficult conditions. It was a terrible six months, but they got results,” says Khider. Some results that were recognized even by the United States, a country that maintains the embargo on Cuba.
Cuba has always sold itself as a medical power, however in July 2021 there were massive demonstrations to protest against the government and among the complaints was the shortage of food and medicine. A contradiction for a leading country in medicine. For Khider, the explanation must be found in the consequences of the US embargo.
“This health system does not allow doctors to work as they could because they do not have material resources, they cannot import syringes, masks, respirators, machine technologies and then the situation becomes quite difficult,” he says.
Doctors who decide to desert cannot return to Cuba for eight years
Not only are these brigades said well, the UN and Human Rights Watch speak of this system of doctors as “modern slavery”, with draconian standards of conduct that violate numerous basic rights of doctors and that lead many to make the decision to desert.
“I have spoken with doctors who stayed in the country where they went on mission and who decided they did not want to return to Cuba. This situation is always analyzed in a very romantic way, either they are heroes of socialism or they are slaves of the dictatorship. For me the situation is much less romantic. In Cuba they charge 100 euros, outside 1,000 euros. Of course, there are people who want to stay because they have children in the country where they are or because they are going to earn more”, clarifies the journalist who, however, highlights two criticisms of the system, the part that remains with the State and the ban on deserters from return to Cuba for eight years.
#EscalaenParis It is also on Facebook. A program coordinated by Florence Valdes and presented by Aida Palau. Conducted by Jérémie Boucher, Yann Bourdelas and Jérémie Besset.