It seems that Cuba has an overabundance of doctors. So many, that they can afford to gift them to other areas that are running short, and that includes Italy. The regional government of Calabria has recruited 50 Cuban doctors to stave off the closure of many wards in hospitals across the southern Italian region.
State-run media outlet Cubadebate said Calabria had been suffering a shortage of doctors since 2010, part of a countrywide healthcare crisis, and had been unable to fill the need any other way. “All the regions are trying their best to hire doctors but are not finding any,” Cubadebate cited Calabrian President Roberto Occhiuto as saying. “This problem is much more serious in Calabria.”
Occhiuto added that the whole recruitment and hiring process would have taken some three years for Italian doctors whereas the new Cuban medics will be ready to start work in a month’s time.
“In order to get (that many doctors in Italy) would have taken us three years. Instead, they’ll be able to start in a month to work in the wards which we would otherwise have had to shut down”.
Occhiuto said he “couldn’t care less” about accusations that the region should not have gone so far abroad for staff. “They’re not going to steal anyone’s jobs”, he added.
Since its 1959 leftist revolution, Cuba has dispatched its “army of white coats” to disaster sites and disease outbreaks around the world in the name of solidarity. In the last decade, they have fought cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa.
