Sheryl Lee Ralph joins debate over Jamaica’s exit from Cuban Medical Brigade

CMC:

Jamaican American actress Sheryl Lee Ralph has joined the conversation surrounding the discontinuation of the Cuban Medical Brigade programme.

“Will America now send the doctors so badly needed in Jamaica,” said Ralph in a post on social media in response to a Gleaner news report.

The question followed an announcement by Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, that the longstanding programme would be discontinued.

She indicated that the decision had not been influenced by mounting pressure from the United States.

However, the Cuban government, in a statement on Friday, said the Jamaican Government had capitulated to US pressure and has moved to withdraw its staff from the country.

Opposition Spokesperson on Foreign and Regional Affairs, Senator Donna Scott-Mottley, subsequently called for the government to provide Jamaicans with a detailed explanation for its decision to terminate the medical cooperation arrangement with Cuba.

The foreign ministry on Saturday night issued a statement in which it stated that it discontinued the Cuba–Jamaica medical cooperation programme after Cuba failed to reasonably respond to a proposal for changes to the arrangement to address concerns it was not in keeping with local law and international conventions.

In a statement, the ministry said chief among the government’s concerns was that Cuban medical professionals were initially not in possession of their own passports and that, outside of overtime payments, their salaries were not paid directly to them, but instead in US dollars to the Cuban authorities by Jamaica.

The programme has been an established part of Jamaica’s healthcare system, for 50 years, with Cuban doctors and other medical professionals serving in hospitals and clinics across the island.

Scott-Mottley said the sudden conclusion of the partnership raises serious questions that the government must address.

The government said it was making arrangements with other countries such as Ghana and the Philippines, to provide health services.