Cuba has sent a complement of trained doctors and nurses to help Italy deal with the Coronavirus outbreak. Italy is currently struggling with the highest fatality statistics even outstripping China where the original outbreak occurred. Lombardy being Italy’s worst effected region specifically asked for help from Cuban medics as they have proved invaluable to contain the Chinese outbreak in Wuhan.
The army of medics called the “White Robes” come from Cuba and travel the world to help with medical emergencies; being among the first to the frontline to fight the cholera epidemic in Haiti, the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa as well as many other such cases globally.
Whereas many developed countries export weapons and arms, Cuba chooses to export its highly trained medics and doctors.
Cuba fighting European Coronavirus
The unit of 52 personal represent the first time Cuba has sent these medical specialists to a European country; Italy being among the richest countries in the world.
In recent days this is the 6th medical brigade sent out by Cuba to fight the spread of Coronavirus abroad, sending also units to Jamaica, Suriname, Grenada, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Cuba has one of the highest ratios worldwide of physicians per capita even when excluding those doctors abroad, and its medical brigades for disaster relief continue to earn Havana goodwill worldwide.
“In a time of crisis, the Cuban government, the Cuban people … have risen to the occasion, they have heard our appeal and they have responded,” Jamaican Health Minister Christopher Tufton said on Saturday upon greeting 140 Cuban medical professionals at Kingston international airport.
Britain also thanked Cuba last week for allowing a British cruise ship that had been turned away by several Caribbean ports to dock on the island and for enabling the evacuation of the more than 600 passengers onboard.
We are all afraid but we have a revolutionary duty to fulfill, so we take out fear and put it to one side, he who says he is not afraid is a superhero, but we are not superheros, we are revolutionary doctors.
Leonardo Fernandez, 68, an intensive care specialist
Meanwhile Cuba, which is known for its disaster preparedness, is stepping up measures at home too to stem the coronavirus contagion. Twenty-five cases have been confirmed so far.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced late on Friday the country would be closing its borders to foreign non-residents from Tuesday in a major blow to one of the motors of its cash-strapped economy, tourism.
Thousands of doctors and medicine students are also going door-to-door monitoring their local communities.
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