\n<\/p>\n
Cuba\u2019s foreign minister has accused the United States of \u201cextorting\u201d Latin American countries by putting pressure on them to cancel decades-old deals with Havana for the supply of doctors.<\/p>\n
Bruno Rodr\u00edguez said the United States was trying to \u201cstrangle\u201d the economy of the communist island, which earns billions from its foreign medical missions, after several countries stopped deploying Cuban doctors.<\/p>\n
Washington says the program \u2013 a major source of pride, and income, in Cuba since the 1960s \u2013 amounts to forced labor.<\/p>\n
The US stance on the doctors program is part of a campaign of maximum pressure on the Cuban regime by Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump has made threats about \u201ctaking\u201d the island after ousting Venezuela\u2019s leader and attacking Iran.<\/p>\n
Countries seeking to maintain strong ties to Washington have started to yield to pressure to pull out of the medical partnerships.<\/p>\n
Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica and Guyana have all terminated their agreements with Cuba, which is teetering on the edge of economic collapse, partly due to a US energy blockade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US government is persecuting, pressuring, and extorting other governments to end the presence of Cuban Medical Brigades in various countries, under false pretenses,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez said on X.<\/p>\n
According to official figures, about 24,000 Cuban doctors and other healthcare professionals were deployed in 56 countries in 2025.<\/p>\n
Most are sent to remote areas.<\/p>\n
Half were deployed to Venezuela, Cuba\u2019s top ally for a quarter of a century before President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro was abducted by US forces in January.<\/p>\n
The program was projected to generate $7bn in earnings for the cash-strapped island last year.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published a report denouncing serious human rights violations in the missions.<\/p>\n
The report accused Cuba of withholding doctors\u2019 wages, confiscating passports and threatening medics with up to eight years in prison if they defected from their jobs abroad.<\/p>\n
In an interview with AFP, the IACHR president, Edgar Stuardo Ral\u00f3n, said some of the practices could be classified as \u201cforced labor\u201d and \u201chuman trafficking\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to official Cuban statistics cited in the report, the doctors receive only between 2.5% and 25% of what countries pay Cuba for their services.<\/p>\n
Cuba has defended the program as a measure of \u201csolidarity\u201d with other countries, designed to bring health services to \u201chard-to-reach places\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cuba\u2019s foreign minister has accused the United States of \u201cextorting\u201d Latin American countries by putting pressure on them to cancel decades-old deals with Havana for the supply of doctors. Bruno Rodr\u00edguez said the United States was trying to \u201cstrangle\u201d the economy of the communist island, which earns billions from its foreign medical missions, after several<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2124,574,18277,877,304,366,11346,7587,536,526],"class_list":{"0":"post-48119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-accused","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-cuba","11":"tag-cuban","12":"tag-cut","13":"tag-doctors","14":"tag-latin","15":"tag-pressuring","16":"tag-program","17":"tag-ties"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}