Despite criticism from the Honduran health professionals union, the government of that country welcomed this Tuesday a brigade of120 specialist doctors from Cuba, who will work there for two years.
The group arrived at the Palmerola airport, 50 kilometers from Tegucigalpa, where they were received by the Minister of Health,Carla Paredes, and the chancellorEnrique Reina, and numerous people chanting slogans such as “I am Fidel, yes it was possible,” reported the French agencyAFP.
Paredes reported thatThe brigade is made up of four coordinators and 96 specialists immunologists, surgeons, anesthetists, cardiologists and orthopedists, among others, who will help reduce delays in care in public hospitals in the country. However, he did not refer to another 20 professionals who, according to official figures released by Cuba and Honduras, would complete the 120 members of the brigade.
When reporting on the event, official Cuban television reproduced apropaganda report from the Honduran government, which praised the arrival of the medical brigade with the “revolutionary commitment” and “the solidarity that characterizes the Cuban people.”
The Cuban ambassador in Honduras,Juan Roberto Loforte, said that it is a “necessary help” to “make up for a group of shortages of specialists that the health system has” in the Central American country, and stated that “they have made a great effort to satisfy the basic needs of the health system.” Honduran.”
According to the diplomat, “they are all specialists and will work in public medicine,” and he noted that “no one is going to take away anyone's job.”
The flight that transported the Cuban doctors from Havana to the Honduran capital occurred after efforts made by the leftist presidentXiomara Castro with the Castro regime and in the midst of questions from the Honduran Medical College (CMH).
Precisely, at the beginning of this month,The CMH denounced the salary privileges for Cuban doctors that would reach the Central American country, to the detriment of local doctors.
The current president of the school,Samuel Santos, then told the local press that there would be no equity in terms of salaries, because whileA Honduran specialist earns 35,000 lempiras (about 1,300 dollars), A Cuban will receive about 49,520 lempiras, that is, 2,000 dollars.
“Our position is thatIn Honduras there are 11,000 unemployed doctors” and “we do not agree that foreign doctors should be brought in,” Santos declared to theAFP. In addition, he added, "they are going to give them a house, a vehicle and food."
“We rule out that it is a solidarity medical brigade (...), it is a sale of services", denounced the union leader, while reiterating the demand that Cubans be "certified" by the CMH, to comply with the mandatory membership law.
However, Minister Paredes assured that "a Cuban doctor has never taken away the space of a Honduran doctor, they only add to what we already have."
Last November, the Medical College of Hondurasopposed the arrival in Tegucigalpa of a brigade of doctors from Cuba.
If you know thatThe Havana regime has chosen to export its doctors to obtain income through cooperation agreements with other countries, despite the fact that these are specialists who are scarce on the island. Likewise, the island's government pays doctors only a part of the high dividends it obtains from medical "cooperation" and has beenaccused of carrying out labor slavery against staff on international medical missions.
According toAFP, By mid-2023, there were 57 Cuban medical brigades in other countries, evenin developed nations, and integrated by22,632 professionals, according to data from the Central Unit of Medical Cooperation of Cuba.
While the Cuban government has thousands of doctors and other health workers spread around the world, and charges for these “missions,”In the country, hospitals do not have the essential medical personnel to serve the citizens,nor with the medications and supplies necessary to guarantee proper care..
In addition to the bleeding of professionals that “internationalist collaboration” entails,more than 12,000 doctors left the Cuban public health system in 2022, in the midst of a widespread crisis in the country that has forced doctors and other health workers to give up their profession, to dedicate themselves to better-paid jobs, or to emigrate, mainly to the United States.
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