Ryan Ba­choo

As the Cuban Med­ical Brigade stalls in oth­er parts of the Caribbean, close to 60 Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are con­tin­u­ing to work in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This was con­firmed by Cuban am­bas­sador to T&T, Gus­ta­vo Daniel Veliz Oli­vares, yes­ter­day. Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has not re­spond­ed to ques­tions on the mat­ter in re­cent months.

In ear­ly March, re­ports in­di­cat­ed that Ja­maica had dis­con­tin­ued its med­ical co­op­er­a­tion pro­gramme with Cu­ba, end­ing a five-decade re­la­tion­ship un­der which health­care work­ers from the Caribbean na­tion filled key gaps in the pub­lic health sys­tem. That same month, Cuban of­fi­cials were al­so re­port­ed­ly prepar­ing to with­draw the coun­try’s med­ical brigade from Guyana. This month, how­ev­er, it was re­port­ed that more than 40 Cuban doc­tors re­main in Ja­maica un­der new con­tracts.