Bahamas Health officials have disclosed that the discontinuation of the Cuban Health Care programme following visa-restriction threats from the US, has placed tremendous pressure on the country’s health workers and finances.
According to the country’s health minister, Dr Michael Darville and Managing Director of the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) Aubynette Rolle, there has been a strain on the country’s health care system since the Cubans left. In a recent report in the Nassau Guardian, Rolle explained that overtime for public healthcare workers has spiked in the Bahamas, due to under-staffing following the cancellation of the Davis administration’s Cuban partnerships.
“The impact is being felt by many,” Rolle said on Friday, “not only by the patients, but it’s also being felt by the coworkers because we now have to ensure that persons are on the shift.
“We have to increase the overtime so there’s an increase in our financial burden, all of those elements. However, like any other country and those prudent individuals, we are abiding by the rules and regulations until the government advises us otherwise,” the health manager noted.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had announced visa sanctions against governments associated with Cuba’s overseas medical missions during a meeting with regional leaders in February, prior to his tour of the English-Speaking Caribbean later in March. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said the US Cuba visa policy was a form of “forced labour”.
Regional leaders, including Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis acknowledged the importance of the Cuban health workers at the time. Davis was among seven Caribbean prime ministers who had met with Rubio, and had pushed back against the US Secretary General’s assertions that foreign officials engaging in such contracts are participating in “forced labour”.
Despite their public show of solidarity with the Cubans, there has been an obvious absence or drastic decline of Cuban health workers at regional hospitals. In Guyana, the government said it plans to embark on an “aggressive” recruitment of foreign nurses to work at several new hospitals that are being built across the country and new conditions of employment would be put in place for Cuban doctors.
Babados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said she was prepared to have her United States visa revoked and urged Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to defend the Cuban health programme. But even as she urged Caribbean leaders to stand up for the Cubans, she acknowledged that her country did not have any Cuban medical staff or nurses.
“Now, I don’t believe that we have to shout across the seas, but I am prepared, like others in this region, that if we cannot reach a sensible agreement on this matter, then if the cost of it is the loss of my visa, to the US, then so be it,” Mottley, the Caribbean’s only female head of government was quoted as saying by Caribbean Today in March.
Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago prime ministers also publicly expressed their support for the Cuban Health Care programme. In his meeting with Rubio in March, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the Cuban doctors in Jamaica have been very helpful to the country.
Despite his defence and assertion that the Cubans were legally employed, Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton left the island a few days later for India to recruit doctors and to establish a training programme to train local doctors in particular specializations.
Last week, it came to national attention that Jamaican doctors trained in China, another country on the US radar, were being refused internship positions in Jamaica. The US has been trying to stomp out the influence of China, Venezuela and Cuba on the region. All three countries pose a threat to the geo-political ambitions of the Trump administration. The Ministry of Health and Wellness has since stated that the country’s internship programme is already oversaturated.
“We lose a lot of our healthcare workers, including our nurses, to other markets and we are trying to expand, but we are short on faculty and clinical rotation space. It (our collaboration with India) will mean healthcare workers coming here (to India) for clinical rotation and also training of trainers,” Dr. Tufton had said back in April in giving the reason for going to India.