They have been providing medical services to Jamaica since 1976, but under severe pressure from the Trump administration, Jamaica is ending the program that had allowed Cuban medical professionals to fill critical gaps in the island’s medical sector.
Announcing the cut late Thursday, the foreign ministry stated that the two sides had been unable to agree on the terms of a renegotiated program, and that the system for engaging doctors, nurses, biomedical engineers, and other practitioners is being scrubbed from the records.
Since taking office nearly 15 months ago, Washington has been exerting enormous pressure on Caribbean Community countries to either abandon bilateral programs altogether or scrap the current arrangement under which the Cuban government receives the bulk of the individual salaries paid to practitioners. Practitioners usually take home about 20% of their monthly pay.
Caribbean leaders who had met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at their summit in St. Kitts a week ago had reported that the medical issue and Cuba in general had attracted lengthy discussions with the region doubling down on the need to maintain the program to fill hundreds of shortages in nearly every member state.
In announcing the end of the program, Health Minister Chris Tufton told reporters that individual contracts can, however, be signed with Cubans who are willing to remain in service, but the bilateral program will have to go.
To maintain brigades in individual countries, cabinets are now switching to full payment for professionals. Trump and Rubio had complained that the partial payment system had amounted to forced labor and human trafficking. Several CARICOM nations, including Guyana, The Bahamas, and Antigua, have rushed to tweak the system to reflect full payment to the workers rather than to Cuban authorities. There are just over 300 Cubans working in Jamaica.
“The government of Jamaica has taken the decision to discontinue the current arrangement concerning the deployment of medical professionals in the public health sector by the government of Cuba. This comes as both governments were unable to agree on the terms and conditions of a new technical cooperation arrangement following the expiration of the previous agreement in February 2023,” the foreign ministry stated.
The ministry noted that in ”the interest of continuity of the valuable service provided by the Cuban medical professionals present in the country, and for their personal certainty and well-being, the government of Jamaica has indicated its willingness for the Ministry of Health and Wellness to engage these medical professionals on an individual basis in keeping with local labor laws.”
But despite the pressure from the US, the region is collaborating with Mexico to provide a massive aid package to Cuba in the coming months as it faces a withering set of sanctions and economic blockade of the island.
On Thursday as well, Barbadian Foreign Minister Chris Sinckler said in parliament that his country will continue to stand with Cuba and to vote at the UN against the decades-old US blockade against Cuba.
“What we can do, however, is to ensure that we continue to monitor the situation, maintain our position in relation to sanctions and other issues which have been affecting the Cuban state, express our solidarity with them, ensure that we work to ensure that no disaffected humanitarian crisis exists in the country for whatever reason, to contribute as nations in the CARICOM region to ensuring that we support ordinary citizens in Cuba to be able to survive and prepare ourselves to work for a solution that would be to the benefit of the people of Cuba. That’s where we have to be in this space. This is not a game of chance. It is not a game. It’s a very serious thing.”
