Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
The Cuban medical personnel who have been in Barbados since April 2020 helping our country to fight the COVID-19 pandemic are members of Cuba’s world-famous “Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade”. This is a highly trained and experienced brigade of medical specialists that is deployed all over the world to respond to the most severe medical and humanitarian crises. Indeed, the Brigade is so highly regarded that it has been nominated for the Nobel Prize on multiple occasions.
The personnel who arrived in April 2020 consisted of 99 nurses and one medical doctor. But when our nation was hit by the deadly Delta variant of the virus in 2021, we sent out an SOS to Cuba and the Cuban authorities responded by sending us an additional 20 nurses and 15 laboratory and medical specialists. And the only reason we appealed to Cuba for these additional specialists is because our public medical authorities were so pleased and satisfied with the exemplary performance of the initial 100 person contingent.
After that initial 100 person contingent had gone beyond the call of duty and heroically served our people for two whole years, they made their way home to Cuba, carrying with them multiple containers of all sorts of consumer items that they had purchased for themselves in Barbados. And once again, so stellar had their performance been, that – at the request of our public medical authorities – they were replaced by a new contingent of 72 nurses.
So, in total, some 207 Cuban medical specialists – nurses, doctors and laboratory technicians – have worked in Barbados over the past two-and-a-half years, giving outstanding service to our people and helping to save Barbadian lives. And for this service to Barbados, our Cuban compatriots have been paid the same salaries that are paid to our own Barbadian nurses, doctors and technicians employed in our Public Sector. Indeed, it is out of said salaries that our Cuban brothers and sisters pay their rent, purchase their groceries, pay for public transportation, enjoy Barbados’ recreational events and facilities, and purchase consumer items to take back home to Cuba.
It is against this background therefore, that I was literally flabbergasted to read Caswell Franklyn’s letter in the 18th of November 2022 edition of Barbados Today charging that our Barbados Government does not provide these Cuban medical specialists with any salaries, and that the Cuban nurses have been “rented” to Barbados by the Government of Cuba for a one-off payment of “US $35,000”, and that, as a result, these wonderful Cuban medical specialists are ,in effect, “slaves” !
This Franklyn claim is so unhinged, fantastical and ludicrous that one is left to wonder how and why a responsible newspaper like Barbados Today would even publish it!
Does Barbados Today really believe that 100 specialist nurses could work in Barbados for two whole years for the princely sum of $700 each, or for less than $1 per day ? And what about the other 107 medical specialists ? Have they too been paid out of this mythical US $35,000 ? If that is what Barbados Today is willing to believe then they are believing that each Cuban specialist has been allocated a sum of $338 for months, and in some cases, years, of work ! Surely, this Caswell Franklyn assertion reeks of lunacy.
But the question arises : why, instead of glibly publishing this ridiculous and manifestly false Caswell Franklyn assertion, didn’t the editorial officials of Barbados Today simply pick up the telephone and contact any one of a number of responsible public officials and ask for some clarification? The same way I am giving this clarification from my vantage point of Ambassador to CARICOM, similar clarification could have been sought and received from our current Minister of Health, Dr Jerome Walcott, our former Ministers of Health, Hon Ian Gooding-Edghill and Colonel Jeffrey Bostic, the Executive Director of our QEH, Mrs Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland, our Chief medical Officer, Dr Kenneth George, the Cuban Ambassador, H.E. Sergio Pastrana, and the list goes on and on.
Why are so many of us always so perversely ready and willing to slander our own country ?
– David Comissiong,
Ambassador to Caricom.
