{"id":47501,"date":"2026-04-11T09:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T09:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=47501"},"modified":"2026-04-11T09:31:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T09:31:00","slug":"cubas-doctors-were-a-lifeline-for-the-world-now-the-caribbean-is-shamefully-complicit-in-the-us-drive-to-expel-them-kenneth-mohammed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=47501","title":{"rendered":"Cuba\u2019s doctors were a lifeline for the world. Now the Caribbean is shamefully complicit in the US drive to expel them | Kenneth Mohammed"},"content":{"rendered":"


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T<\/span>here is a line, often quoted, seldom practised, from the Christian gospels: \u201cLove thy neighbour as thyself.\u201d It is recited from the Americas<\/a> to Africa, invoked in speeches, embroidered into national mottoes.<\/p>\n

But like many moral injunctions, it has proven easier to proclaim than to live by. Across the Caribbean<\/a> and Latin America, something extraordinary and shameful is unfolding.<\/p>\n

Cuban doctors,<\/strong> emissaries of one of the world\u2019s most besieged nations, are being expelled from host nations, contracts terminated, health programmes dismantled. And, in their absence, the poorest will pay \u2013 in untreated illnesses, unattended births, undiagnosed cancers. The region is, in effect, amputating its own lifeline \u2013 under pressure from the US.<\/p>\n

On Friday the Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodr\u00edguez <\/a>accused the US of \u201cextorting\u201d countries by forcing them to cancel decades-old deals<\/a> with Havana for the supply of doctors.<\/p>\n

The tone was set in Donald Trump\u2019s first term. In 2018, 8,300 Cuban doctors left Brazil<\/a> after the country\u2019s then president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, closely aligned with Washington, threatened the programme and its payment structure, questioning the qualifications of the Cubans \u2013 issues that had never been raised when their services were indispensable.<\/p>\n

Since then, the US has pushed countries across the region to terminate these agreements, branding them \u201cforced labour<\/a>\u201d and even \u201chuman trafficking\u201d because the Cuban state retains a share of salaries. Conveniently ignoring that these doctors were trained free of charge by the Cuban government, unlike their heavily indebted counterparts in countries such as the UK where medical graduates have the onerous burden of student debt for decades.<\/p>\n

The consequences have been enormous. Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines have all capitulated. Across the Caribbean and Latin America, programmes, some as old as 50 years, are being dismantled, doctors withdrawn and already fragile systems strained, all under the threat of US visa and diplomatic sanctions. Only St Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago have yet to follow. Millions could lose basic healthcare, with Indigenous communities particularly exposed.<\/p>\n