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At least five Cuban doctors who left the medical brigade in Calabria, Italy, are in an administrative limbo that prevents them from being hired by the provincial healthcare system, amid signs that the Cuban regime is pressuring local authorities to block their re-employment, reported Diario de Cuba.
Sources familiar with the process indicate that these irregularities may be linked to pressures exerted by the structure of the Cuban medical mission to prevent professionals who leave the program from being able to independently integrate into the Italian healthcare system.
The doctors had worked as specialists in the provinces of Reggio Calabria, Vibo Valentia, and Crotone, and expressed interest in working directly with the provincial health service (ASP) after learning of the regional government's intention to increase the hiring of foreign medical personnel to alleviate the severe shortage of professionals.
One of the doctors recounted to Diario de Cuba that when he tried to obtain his service certificate after leaving the mission, the ASP denied it to him.
Upon visiting the institution, he discovered in his file an official communication sent in his name by Luis Enrique Pérez Ulloa, head of the Cuban medical mission in Italy, notifying of an alleged resignation that he never submitted.
The case is not isolated. Other doctors have reported similar situations, in which Italian health authorities have received communications in their name from the Cuban medical mission, without their consent, which has led to administrative blockages and the inability to access jobs outside the official program
This type of maneuver is part of a chain of administrative contradictions that doctors who choose to leave the missions systematically encounter, and which human rights experts have documented as part of a pattern of control and retaliation.
In some cases, hiring decisions have been verbally reversed by officials, without any documented support or legal basis, which, according to legal experts, undermines due process and leaves professionals in a state of legal vulnerability.
Even when official resolutions had approved the reintegration of some doctors into the healthcare system, these decisions were later informally annulled, without written notification or legal justification, creating a scenario of uncertainty and arbitrariness.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published a 199-page report detailing the conditions faced by Cuban healthcare professionals abroad.
Among the reported conditions is the retention of 75% by the Cuban state of the salaries earned by doctors abroad, a practice that the European Parliament has described as modern slavery.
This situation is compounded by the withdrawal of benefits such as housing, which forces doctors to cover their own living expenses, increasing their economic vulnerability while they remain subject to the restrictions of the official program.
The phenomenon is on the rise. Dozens of doctors have abandoned missions in recent months in Italy, amid a growing international questioning of this model of medical services export.
"My question is: how can a simple Cuban like Luis Enrique, with no voice or vote in this country, have that power over the Sanitary Authorities to prevent those of us who have decided not to send more money to the Government of Cuba from working here in Italy?"
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