T&T must come clean on Cuba medics

2026-03-20 - 05:13

Last August, the US State Department issued a statement in which it threatened to revoke the visas of Grenadian government officials, and their family members, for their support of Cuba’s medical assistance to the island. In the statement, the US State Department said Grenadian officials were complicit in the Cuban regime’s medical mission, in which medical professionals were ‘rented’ by other countries at high prices, with most of the revenue being kept by the Cuban authorities. “The United States continues to engage governments, and will take action as needed, to bring an end to such forced labour. We urge governments to pay the doctors directly for their services, not the regime slave masters,” the US State Department said. That statement was preceded, in February 2025, by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio threats to restrict the visas of anyone involved in Cuba’s overseas medical missions. Responding to those comments, then prime minister Dr Keith Rowley suggested the US could take away his visa, if he could “ensure that the sovereignty of Trinidad and Tobago is known to its people and respected by all.” Also responding to Mr Rubio’s first threat, then St Vincent and the Grenadines prime minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves said at least 60 people in the nation were on a Cuban-run haemodialysis programme, used to treat kidney failure. “If the Cubans are not there, we may not be able to run the service. I will prefer to lose my visa than to have 60 poor and working people die,” Gonsalves said then. In March last year, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley told her country’s Parliament, “Barbados does not currently have Cuban medical staff or Cuban nurses, but I will be the first to go to the line and to tell you that we could not get through the (COVID-19) pandemic without the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors.” And in a direct challenge to the US government’s claim that Cuban medics operating in developing countries were being used as forced labour and subject to human trafficking, then prime minister Stuart Young, in March 2025, said Cuban medical professionals in T&T were paid salaries directly and set up with housing and airfare by the State. This issue of Cuban doctors and nurses working in the Caribbean has become more urgent because this month, the Jamaica government ended its longstanding arrangement with Cuba and the Guyana government claims Cuba withdrew its medical practitioners from that country. Given all that has transpired surrounding the Cuban medical presence in the region, now would be a good time for the Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration to declare its position on the issue. It is not a secret that Mrs Persad-Bissessar has aligned this country’s foreign policy much more closely with the US than any other leader in