The Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, Philip J. Pierre, indicated this Wednesday to EFE that there will be no “imminent withdrawal” of Saint Lucian students studying medicine in Cuba.
Pierre spoke out after the United States Embassy in the region denied having demanded that the Caribbean country prohibit its nationals from carrying out health studies in Havana.
“The students who are in Cuba will continue there. There is no imminent withdrawal,” declared the Saint Lucian president.
The United States Embassy in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean stated during the day that it had not asked Saint Lucia to stop sending its citizens to study medicine in Cuba.
However, last Tuesday the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia himself said that he had “a big problem” because The US was putting pressure on them so that they would not send more Saint Lucians to study medicine on the island.
The US Embassy in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean reiterated that the Cuban health program is “illegitimate”, although agreements have always existed between the party governments.
“The United States has not recently spoken with Saint Lucia about international education and respects the sovereign decisions of countries regarding the education of their citizens,” the US delegation stressed in a statement.
Likewise, they pointed out that “the US continues to call for an end to exploitation and forced labor in the illegitimate Cuban regime’s medical missions program abroad,” a line of message that they insist on to discredit Cuban medical missions abroad.
The US pressures Saint Lucia to prohibit its nationals from studying medicine in Cuba
Medical training of international students in Cuba
Cuba began offering significant full scholarships to students from the Caribbean and Latin America to study medicine in the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana, which was officially inaugurated in 1999.
The Cuban medical missions became one of the main sources of tension between the United States and several Caribbean countries, after the measures promoted by Washington against this system through which Havana sends teams of medical personnel to dozens of countries.
Last month, the U.S. Embassy in Barbados declared that Cuba’s “medical missions” program, which has benefited several Caribbean countries, “is based on coercion and abuse.”
In mid-January, Antigua and Barbuda announced that it had recruited a group of 120 nurses from Ghana to strengthen the health system in the face of the pressure to no longer rely on Cuban professionals.
Antigua and Barbuda recruits nurses from Ghana due to US pressure on Cuban missions
Another example was the Bahamas, whose Government reported last June that it was suspending the hiring of Cuban health personnel and canceling its current contracts with a Cuban employment agency.
At the beginning of pressure from Washington, the members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), including Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda and the Bahamas, They defended Cuban medical missions as vital to their health systemsbut they are being forced to capitulate.
EFE/OnCuba
