Our doctors are the pride of Cuba, and of many nations of the world.
What bothers those who implement this campaign against Cuban medical collaboration is the example we are capable of being.
René Tamayo León | internet@granma.cu
April 18, 2025
What is behind the attack the US Administration is promoting against Public health in Cuba, and in particular against Cuban export of medical services? What does this attack consist of? What Cuban medical services contribute to Cuba and to the world?
At a time when almost all Cuban access to markets and financial resources, indispensable for any economy, imperialism is targeting particularly our export of medical services, denounced Cuban president from the Presidential House, they also show awareness that the formation and training of health personnel is a strength of Cuban society.
The president talked with the Minister of Public Health, José Angel Portal Miranda, with the secretary general of the Cuban Red Cross, Carlos Ricardo Pérez, and with Luther Castillo, Minister of the Honduran Cabinet and a graduate of the Cuban Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM in Spanish).
The podcast focus was the campaign against Cuba, noted our president, trying to diminish the merit of the service Cuban doctors provide the world, calling it “slave work,” and accusing our government of not paying them and therefore exploiting and even enriching itself with their unpaid work. It was an attempt to intrude in, or try to contaminate, traditional press and social nets with messages of this kind, it was part of a very cynical plan devised by extreme right Cubans outside our country.
The actual meaning of the Cuban Brigades
«What do the Cuban Medical Brigades have that bother the American government so much? That was the initial question of the Cuban president to the director of MINSAP (Ministry of Public Health). The director explained the structure of international health cooperation, its history and the use they give to the financial resources obtained.
In first place, he said, the Cuban Medical Brigades have international recognition because of the training of our health professionals in general as well as because of what they have managed to transmit to the world in terms of solidarity.
There is also, he explained, the contribution that our international cooperation can bring to the sustainability of the Cuban Health system, services that are free of cost but that do cost the Cuban state, and services that require resources in foreign exchange.
The truth, Portal Miranda added, the history of our medical collaboration with the world started from the beginnings of the Revolution. In 1960, he reminded us, Cuban doctors arrived in Chile, and from here we sent teams, equipment and resources; that action of solidarity was not considered our first mission, historically we defined our first mission our collaboration in Argelia in 1963 with the arrival there on May 23 the first permanent brigade.
After that, Cuba started the formation of professionals, in Cuba and outside of Cuba, and medical collaboration with other regions expanded free of cost and based on international solidarity, helping countries that most needed it. It was an extension of the principle that our Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro Ruz, taught us, we share what we have.
During those years, more than 605 000 health workers (many have done this many times, as each mission counts like one mission) have cooperated in 165 countries in which they have provided more than 2300 million consultations.
At this moment we are present in 56 countries, with more than 24 000 collaborators. Medical cooperation these years includes the formation of more than 87 980 students from 150 countries, inside and outside of Cuba, 31 236 at ELAM.
Portal Miranda reminded that Cuban medical cooperation includes not only doctors but many nurses, dentists, epidemiologists, electro-medicine specialists, technologists of many differing specializations and workers of service. The World Health Organization has developed a model to consider our National Health System and Cuban medical cooperation as a referent to the world. And we have been present, I highlight, not only in friendly countries but we have provided service to nations with which we did not even have diplomatic relations.
And all this, reflected our Minister, is what bothers those who campaign against Cuban medical collaboration: the example we set; the recognition we have from the governments where we provide such cooperation, from the professionals with whom we work but especially from the entire populations we serve.
Our doctors, he said, sometimes are the only ones managing the hospitals where no other professionals go; often our doctors are the only ones providing service to entire populations that would not have doctors otherwise, often because of the regions where they live.
¿What use is given to the foreign exchange resources obtained?
Díaz-Canel asked about the use given to the foreign Exchange resources obtained thanks to the medical collaboration, and the director of MINSAP explained that they are fundamentally designated to the Cuban Health System, to provide services to our own population.
Sometimes, as you have explained, the country has faced financial challenges, and to ensure for example that our children can access milk, or fuel required, a share of those foreign Exchange resources is used. But, fundamentally, these resources are the income of our Health Care system and cover the needs in foreign exchange of the health sector and of the Health System required to support the health sector and keep it free of cost to Cubans. To provide our services, the Minister explained, a percentage of foreign exchange is needed but this does not cover all so the state dedicates 26 percent of GDP to health.
The challenging situation our country faces, Diaz-Canel explained, has obligated us to use some of the income received from medical services exported to buy medicines, to support our basic family basket program and at times to support our energy sector.
Diaz-Canel reflected that there is “no doubt the campaign against Cuban medical brigades is desperate to block Cuban cooperation and has two clear goals: to close any path of access to income for our country, including even this noble activity, so needed by the receiving countries, as health services are. The other reason is political-ideological: to put an end to the Cuban example.”
«Slaves» of solidarity and love for humanity.
Doctor Carlos Ricardo Pérez, secretary general of Cuban Red Cross, a doctor who himself has served more in these missions, some solidarity missions and some including cooperative payment, explains that calling “slave” a free man is both offensive and disrespectful.” To respond to such offences, we need to remember the Hippocratic Oath, signed by doctors and in which they commit to perform their duties with dignity and consciousness, giving priority to the needs of life and health of our patients and honoring the noble traditions of the medical profession.
Doctor Perez explained how medical brigades are integrated in Cuba, how contracts are made, stipends for services provided and allocated while outside our country, deposits in Cuba for accruals regarding their cooperation, and respect for monthly salaries in the health centers, also respect for the position they had prior leaving in their mission outside of Cuba.
In regards to the words expressed by Dr. Perez, our president noted that before such testimonies the enemies of our Revolution still fail to understand the vocation of service, detachment and altruism, at the root of professions connected with health services. In relation with the medical brigades or missions the president invited to share experiences with the doctor from Honduras, Luther Castillo, from the Garifuna community, Africa descendants and original people in many regions of the Caribbean, Minister of the government of Honduras and graduated in ELAM. Luther made a touching evaluation of the Cuban cooperation in health and in the formation of medical personnel in countries of the global South and even in the United States.
Works are Love
«If anything has lasted as long as the blockade, it is the Cuban cooperation on Health. For more than 6o years, they have provided services in 165 countries, attending millions of people and saving lives in situations of emergency and natural disasters», noted our president. «and, in the majority of cases, he said, not only cooperation was provided without cost, as long as we were able to do so, but its continuity warranted forming schools for the training and preparation of local human resources».
«A government interested in profits, he noted, would not form professionals that would compete with them. A health system looking at itself as a business, would have never gotten involved, as others avoid doing, in humanitarian crises like the Ebola epidemic or the COVID 19 pandemic outside of its borders.
«Works are Love. Lies do not kill truths as powerful as the noble mission of Cuban medical brigades», added Díaz-Canel, because, he said, this works «only provoke in us feelings of pride and thankfulness. They are the creation of a humanistic genius like our Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, who considered Cuban medical cooperation a genuine example of solidarity and humanism».
