Health Ministry remains silent on future of Cuban medical programme

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

As the Cuban med­ical pro­gramme ap­pears to be un­rav­el­ling across the re­gion, there has been no of­fi­cial re­sponse from the Min­istry of Health on the is­sue.

This month, both Ja­maica and Guyana for­mal­ly ter­mi­nat­ed their long­stand­ing med­ical mis­sions with Cu­ba, cit­ing pres­sure from the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er, Health Min­is­ter Lack­ram Bo­doe has yet to con­firm whether Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pro­gramme will con­tin­ue or be dis­con­tin­ued.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that in the lead-up to the April 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 Cuban doc­tors and 176 Cuban nurs­es op­er­at­ing lo­cal­ly. At present, those fig­ures are un­known, as Bo­doe has not re­spond­ed de­spite mul­ti­ple at­tempts to con­tact him over the past two weeks.

A re­sponse from the Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MBTT) is al­so pend­ing. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion said it does not have da­ta on the num­ber of Cuban doc­tors prac­tis­ing lo­cal­ly and re­ferred queries to the MBTT.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to state the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the use of Cuban med­ical per­son­nel. He said the mat­ter should not be avoid­ed and urged Bo­doe to ad­dress the is­sue pub­licly.

The Min­istry’s si­lence con­trasts with the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s po­si­tion, which high­light­ed the crit­i­cal role of Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als—par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial­ists—with­in the health­care sys­tem, most re­cent­ly dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Amid the lack of clar­i­ty, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art, be­lieves the pro­gramme may have al­ready end­ed.

“I be­lieve the pro­gramme has al­ready been pulled. I am not aware of any sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of Cuban nurs­es or doc­tors in the sys­tem cur­rent­ly, oth­er than those who may have al­ready be­come na­tion­als,” Stu­art said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He added that there ap­pears to be no on­go­ing re­cruit­ment or pres­ence of Cuban med­ical per­son­nel in the pub­lic health sys­tem.

In his view, the loss of the pro­gramme would sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact health­care de­liv­ery.

“The main losers are the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who will be dis­ad­van­taged in ac­cess­ing spe­cial­i­ty ser­vices,” Stu­art said, not­ing that the coun­try pro­duces on­ly a lim­it­ed num­ber of spe­cial­ists an­nu­al­ly.

He ques­tioned how the coun­try would fill the gap, point­ing to chal­lenges in at­tract­ing for­eign doc­tors due to un­com­pet­i­tive salaries and glob­al de­mand for med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.

“We are not at­tract­ing doc­tors from abroad. Coun­tries like the UK and the US are ab­sorb­ing them, and even with­in the Caribbean, pro­fes­sion­als are now earn­ing more than in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Stu­art warned that the nurs­ing sec­tor faces an even more se­vere chal­lenge, cit­ing the ab­sence of lo­cal spe­cial­i­ty nurs­ing train­ing pro­grammes.

“We cur­rent­ly train reg­is­tered nurs­es and psy­chi­atric nurs­es, but be­yond that, there is lit­tle spe­cialised train­ing avail­able,” he said.

A Cuban doc­tor, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said while some Cuban med­ical per­son­nel re­main in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there may be no doc­tors cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing un­der the for­mal Cuban med­ical brigade, as con­tracts would have ex­pired.

The source added that sev­er­al Cuban doc­tors are un­able to re­turn home and are hop­ing to be grant­ed full reg­is­tra­tion lo­cal­ly.

The Med­ical Board con­firmed that Cuban doc­tors with more than sev­en years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go are el­i­gi­ble for full reg­is­tra­tion, while those with less ex­pe­ri­ence must pass a qual­i­fy­ing ex­am­i­na­tion.

How­ev­er, the doc­tor ar­gued that this re­quire­ment is un­fair, claim­ing many Cuban prac­ti­tion­ers have more ex­pe­ri­ence than some of their lo­cal coun­ter­parts.

Ef­forts to ob­tain com­ment from Cuban Am­bas­sador Gus­ta­vo Daniel Veliz Oli­vares and Na­tion­al Co­or­di­na­tor of the Cuban Med­ical Brigade in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Or­lan­do Lazaro Di­az Gomez, were un­suc­cess­ful.

While Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not re­spond to ques­tions, she has pub­licly dis­tanced Trinidad and To­ba­go from the Cuban gov­ern­ment. Speak­ing at the open­ing of the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty in St Kitts, she stat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go does not sup­port Cu­ba’s “dic­ta­to­r­i­al” regime.

For­mer health min­is­ter Fuad Khan said Cuban doc­tors filled a crit­i­cal gap in the past, but he be­lieves their role may now be less es­sen­tial due to an in­crease in lo­cal­ly trained spe­cial­ists.

Mean­while, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Prakash Per­sad said the Gov­ern­ment is no longer of­fer­ing Cuban schol­ar­ships for post­grad­u­ate med­ical stud­ies, amid Cu­ba’s on­go­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an, eco­nom­ic and en­er­gy cri­sis.