Kingstown, Mar 7 (Prensa Latina) The Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, defended the Cuban health brigade program in the face of threats from the U.S. government, iWitness News reported today.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was announcing the expansion of an existing policy of restricting foreign government officials whose countries employ Cuban doctors and nurses.
“Maybe some people in Florida who are pushing do not fully understand what is happening, and when they receive the information, they will see that they are wrong,” Gonsalves said.
He explained that Caricom foreign ministers met to discuss the issue “and decided to gather all relevant information, and they are going to discuss the issue at the regional level, and they hope to have a meeting at some point in the not too distant future at an appropriate level with the U.S. government.”
Although Saint Vincent and the Grenadines does not have a significant number of Cuban medical personnel compared to Jamaica and Guyana, their country pays Cuban professionals the same rate as its own professionals.
«It is said that Cuban professionals who are here under the agreement with the Cuban government, had to pay, I don’t know if it is 10 percent or 15 percent, whatever, of their salary to the Cuban government.
“But that doesn’t mean they are exploited. They get free education. And if they go abroad, earning money from that education, it’s not unreasonable for them to put something in the box so that more people can get educated,” he said.
In defending the presence of Cuban health personnel here, he referred to the Hemodialysis Unit at the Modern Medical and Diagnostic Complex, which is supervised by Cuban professionals.
“There are 60 people there on hemodialysis, 60 ordinary Saint Vincentians. They are receiving free hemodialysis, but the point I am going to make is that if the Cubans are not there, we may not be able to manage the service. Should I allow 60 people to die?” he said.
“I would rather lose my visa than have 60 poor and hard-working people die,” the prime minister said.
Today, the Association of Friendship with Cuba in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines denounced the intention of the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to “demonize the assistance of Cuban medical personnel to underdeveloped nations” and described it as a “Cold War practice.”
“Cuba, the largest and most developed of the Caribbean chain, is a sister nation of the Caribbean that has long demonstrated its willingness to share its human resources capital not only with the rest of the region, but also with Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia,” he said.
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