Cuba Increases Control over Its
Doctors
The exodus of Cuban health
professional does not stop, and the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP)
apparently has decided to act to counter a phenomenon that is damaging domestic
medical services but much more the country’s income.
A document attributed to the senior
management of MINSAP, adopted in a meeting held in mid-March of this year, has
been making the rounds in the e-mail of health professionals in which the
sector’s new policy is expressed. This event was confirmed to CubaNet by an
official from the Provincial Management of Public Health in Guantanamo, whose
identity we do not reveal for obvious reasons.
The document has 18 instructions. The
first three are focused on the re-organization of services and the re-location
of professionals as a result of the staff review carried out last year.
The other 15 are directed to curbing
the exodus of health professionals through private contracts or other avenues
and steering the application of the measures in each case.
The document
One of the most controversial,
instruction numbers 4 establishes that Cuban doctors in Angola must be
relieved, but without increasing the collaboration with that country, until its
authorities stop handing down measures that discourage the hiring of Cuban
professional in private clinics or institutions.
Another measure, number 5, directs the
withdrawal of the passport, in the airport itself, of professionals who later
return from the completion of a mission.
Measures 6, 7 and 8 aim to get the
private clinics of other countries to hire Cuban doctors through MINSAP, an agency
that claims the right to review the professional’s individual contract,
obviously so that the doctors pay the corresponding tax to the Cuban government
and in no way receive all the money that is due them from the agreed upon wage.
Measure number 10 requires concluding
the process of cancelling the diplomas of the 211 professionals who left
service without authorization, and number 11 directs MINSAP’s vice-minister of
International Relations to carry out a study of the existing rules in the
International Labor Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and
the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), as it relates to the migration of
the sector’s professionals.
Punishing the “undisciplined”
Rule 12 considers it a serious breach
for a health professional to not return to Cuba upon fulfillment of his mission
abroad without good cause verified by MINSAP, and it requires final separation
from the profession by those who engage in said conduct, with the subsequent
withdrawal of the degree.
Meanwhile, Rule 13 orders the creation
of records of disqualification for those professionals who violate the
established procedures for leaving the country. If any of them repents and
returns, Rule 14 directs that they cannot be re-located in their previous
workplace but in an inferior status.
Another cage for the army of white
coats
Rules 16 and 17 of the document are
intended to promote meetings with ambassadors of the countries where Cuban
health professionals travel, largely for the purpose of discouraging their
being recruited to remain and practice in that country.
The heads of Cuban medical teams and
ambassadors have received that same instruction. Besides interfering in the
internal affairs of other countries, this shows one of the thus-far-discouraged
facets of Cuban medical collaboration, which is none other than exerting
pressure over the countries receiving these types of services to make them
faithful to the regime’s policy, which is clearly established in instruction
number 4 with respect to Angola.
Finally, number 18 establishes a
monthly coordination between MINSAP and the Department of Identification,
Migration and Foreign Affairs of the Interior Ministry so that it will report
to MINSAP on the doctors who leave the country as well as those who have begun
proceedings for that purpose, in order to take appropriate measures.
Being a health professional in Cuba, a
doubtful advantage
The above measures show the doubtful
advantage of being a health professional in Cuba, although the same could be
said with respect to other professionals.
Determined to provide the country with
qualified personnel, the government never concerned itself with steadily
encouraging the efforts of the professionals themselves. That explains their
massive exodus to foreign countries and other better paying jobs with the
consequential social loss.
At the dawn of the 21st Century,
renowned Cuban professionals have been subjected to a financial exploitation
that not even the fiercest capitalist would have dared to impose. Paid
miserable wages, many times they sign unfair contracts that the government
offers for them to work abroad because it is the only chance they have of
improving their housing or getting housing, or acquiring a car or having some
savings for their retirement.
In doing so, at a sometimes irreversible
familial cost, they damage their freedom and self-esteem in service to a
government for which they are only a source of income that allows it to
continue dominating the people.
*Roberto Jesús
Quiñones Haces was born in the city of Cienfuegos September 20, 1957. He is a
law graduate. In 1999 he was unjustly and illegally sentenced to eight years’
incarceration and since then has been prohibited from practicing as a lawyer. He
received the Vitral Grand Prize in Poetry in 2001 with his book “Written from
Jail” as well as Mention and Special Recognition from the Nosside International
Juried Competition in Poetry in 2006 and 2008, respectively. His poems appear
in the 1994 UNEAC Anthology, in the 2006 Nosside Competition Anthology and in
the selection of ten-line stanzas “This Jail of Pure Air” published by Waldo
Gonzalez in 2009.
Source: Translating
Cuba. Translated by MLK
Well, it is generally
accepted that Cuba has one of the best medical doctors in the world. The
country's health experts have a much broader role than simply catering for the
local population, as the nation exported over 140,000 doctors to the poorest
regions across the globe since 1963. Cuba is also home to the best and the
largest medical institution with nearly 13,000 students from 124 countries. Our
Maimuna Jallow looked at the role the Cuban experts play in enriching country's
economy in this report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQj_IsxY5H4
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