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Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley says she is prepared to have her United States visa revoked, as she urged Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries to ensure they are able to “explain...what the Cubans have been able to do for us” as they seek to defend the Cuban health brigade programme.

“This matter, with the Cubans and the nurses, should tell us everything that we need to know. Barbados does not currently have Cuban medical staff or Cuban nurses, but I will be the first to go to the line and to tell you that we could not get through the (Covid-19) pandemic without the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors,” Mottley said in a statement in Parliament.

Mottley, the latest Caricom leader to address the issue, said she would be the first to inform the world that Cuban health professionals have been paid “the same thing that we pay Bajans (Barbadians), and that the notion, as was peddled not just by this government in the US, but the previous government, that we were involved in human trafficking by engaging with the Cuban nurses was fully repudiated and rejected by us.