SA paid at least R400m for Cuban brigade
Cuba has sent doctors to more than a dozen countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, including hard-hit Italy.
Cuba and the US
France has also authorised Cuban teams to help in its overseas territories.
Cuba has made healthcare a societal pillar, despite the poverty of the island, which has been subject to US sanctions for six decades.
Former president Barack Obama sought to reconcile with Cuba, calling the isolation policy a failure, and ended a programme in which Washington encouraged Cuban doctors to defect and resettle in the United States – whose capitalist medical system offers exponentially higher incomes.
President Donald Trump’s administration has snapped back US pressure sharply and has imposed visa restrictions on Cuban officials involved in medical missions.
Cuba says it earned $6.3 billion from its medical dispatches in 2018 and used the proceeds to finance its own universal healthcare coverage.
One of the staunchest critics of the programme is Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right ally of Trump, who kicked out 8 000 Cuban health workers when he took office.
