US urges gov’t to suspend medical training ties with Cuba

CASTRIES (CMC):

Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre has confirmed that the United States has urged St Lucia to halt the practice of sending its nationals to study medicine in Cuba – a move that threatens to compound pressures on the island’s already-stretched health sector.

“I have a big problem. Many of our doctors got trained in Cuba, and now the great United States has said we can’t do that any longer,” Pierre told a weekend meeting of the Second World Congress on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.

“This is a major problem I have to face.”

He noted that the majority of St Lucia’s doctors received their medical training in Cuba, an arrangement that has long underpinned the country’s healthcare system.

“We also have Cubans who come over to work. So the American government has said we can’t even train them in Cuba. So I have a major issue on my hand,” Pierre told the conference.

The prime minister said Washington’s position had added strain to a sector already grappling with shortages, describing the shift as driven largely by United States geopolitical considerations. He urged the St Lucian diaspora and local innovators to help the country navigate the resulting challenges.

Last month, the United States Embassy in Barbados criticised Cuba’s “medical missions” programme – which has benefited several Caribbean countries – saying it “relies on coercion and abuse”.

“Cuban medical workers face withheld wages, confiscated passports, forced family separation and exile, restriction of movement through curfews and surveillance, intimidation and threats, and even pressure to falsify medical records and fabricate procedures. Many also endure excessive work hours and unsafe conditions,” the embassy said.

Washington said it “is committed to exposing injustices and bringing an end to the Cuban regime’s coercive programme”.

The United States has since intensified its criticism of Cuba’s health-brigade system, arguing that the government in Havana “is profiting off the forced labour of medical personnel” and that “renting out Cuban medical professionals at exorbitant prices and keeping the profit for regime elites is not a humanitarian gift.

“It is forced labour. It treats the doctors as commodities rather than human beings and professionals. The United States calls for an end to the Cuban regime’s coercive and exploitative labour export scheme.”

The chair of the Congress, Sir Cato Laurencin, an orthopaedic surgeon and senior academic based in the United States, said St Lucia was not without options.

“Those of us in the diaspora with St Lucian roots need to work more closely with St Lucia. There are physicians here who want to be part of the new hospital system and support the country’s healthcare development,” Laurencin said, pointing to initiatives linked to the University of Connecticut as possible models.

He also highlighted programmes focused on fitness, healthy lifestyles and local food cultivation, arguing that such efforts are increasingly important as Washington continues to raise concerns about Cuban medical missions through diplomatic channels in the Eastern Caribbean.

Pierre also addressed the financial pressures facing the sector, citing the long-delayed reopening of St Jude Hospital in Vieux Fort, in the south of the island. He said commissioning the facility would cost an estimated US$50 million — an amount the national budget cannot absorb.

His administration, he said, has explored using the Citizenship by Investment Programme, under which foreign investors are granted citizenship in return for substantial contributions to socio-economic development, as a means of bridging the funding gap.

“These disparities, apart from social and economic, they must filter down into our healthcare system. We have tried in St Lucia to have a school feeding programme, where we try to ensure that our kids get at least one nutritious meal a day.

“But sometimes the funders determine that you have to buy certain foods. I have no choice,” Pierre said, urging Caribbean citizens to rethink lifestyles and habits in response to the region’s health challenges.

The hybrid congress was convened to bring professionals together to examine racial and ethnic health disparities and strategies to address them.

It was organised by Springer Nature’s Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities and the Connecticut National Medical Association, in partnership with the National Medical Association, the St Lucia Medical and Dental Association, the W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute, the Cato T. Laurencin Institute for Regenerative Engineering at the University of Connecticut, and the St Lucia government.