Cuba offers option to displaced Jamaican students
JAMAICAN medical students who were displaced when Russia invaded neighbour Ukraine last March can turn to Cuba to continue their studies if they so desire, Cuba’s new ambassador to Jamaica has said.
But Ambassador Fermin Quinones was quick to point out that scholarships may not be readily available to them as Cuba has not yet resumed that element of its programme that was suspended last year at the height of the [novel coronavirus] pandemic.
Twenty panicking Jamaican students returned home safely last month, following military strikes by Russia that has evolved into a major war which has left thousands dead on either side since clashes began on February 24.
Quinones, who was answering questions from the Jamaica Observer in an interview, his first since he arrived in Jamaica mid-December last year to succeed Ines Fors Fernandez as the country’s most senior envoy, said that while he did not know the costs involved to accommodate non-scholarship students in medicine and other fields, Cuba would welcome the displaced budding doctors with open arms.
However, he confirmed that none of the students who were forced to leave Ukraine had contacted the embassy in Kingston directly. There are two other agencies in Jamaica, he said, that handled applications from studentsl to pay their tuition to Cuban institutions of higher learning.
“The problem is that last year, because of COVID-19, it was impossible for the Cuban Government to present the scholarship programme for students, not only for Jamaicans but for other countries. I heard that some students decided to study in Ukraine instead.
“The restrictions we had in Cuba last year did not allow us to open up the scholarship programme that we had in the past, where thousands of students worldwide go to Cuba to study. I have not received official infomation yet, but I believe maybe this year we will be able to take in scholarship students, because the course in universities in Cuba now are beginning in January, not September anymore. It was changed a year or two ago. We are expecting information about that in order to know if new scholarships will be provided,” he said.
“But yes,” he continued, “students who can afford to pay can go through the process. I cannot tell you if it is cheaper in Ukraine than in Cuba but any student who decides to study in Cuba, paying by themselves, are free to go. They can come to the embassy, we can exchange information, and we can tell them the Jamaican institutions that are working with Cuban ones in coordinating everything.
“There are at least two companies in Jamaica and between them, I hear they have more than 70 requests to study in Cuba for the next school year. But there are only few scholarships. Now, if your son or daughter desires to go to Cuba and you have the possibility to pay for their studies, you can go. It’s not expensive. Some of the students went to Ukraine because Ukraine was providing scholarships, not because they were paying.
“And studying medicine in Cuba is cheaper than studying medicine at UWI (The University of the West Indies),” Quinones said.
The ambassador said that to the best of his knowledge, none of the Jamaican students who returned from Ukraine has contacted the Cuban embassy for assistance with scholarships. He could not say whether or not any had approached universities in Cuba as paying students.
“We have a broad scholarship programme which is not all about medicine,” he said. “You can go to Cuba to study anything you want to study. It is cheaper and easier to study anything you want in a Cuban university. You can go to Santiago de Cuba, which is close by; there are a lot of flights to Santiago de Cuba. It is a good opportunity for Jamaicans to study Spanish, to integrate into the Latin American region and in the efforts of the Jamaican education system to bring more Spanish to the population,” Quinones maintained.
Touching on the subject of Cuba’s vaccination programme, Ambassador Quinones said that the socialist country has achieved levels that most countries of the world have not.
He said that 90 per cent of the population, from age two to over 100, had been vaccinated with Cuban-manufactured vaccines. Over 50 per cent, too, had been given booster shots.
Of the over 90 per cent of the population that have been vaccinated, around 99 per cent have used Cuban-manufactured vaccines, Quinones said.
Cuba has produced five vaccines to fight the pandemic. It has begun exporting vaccines to countries like St Vincent and the Grenadines, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, Western Sahara, Iran, and Vietnam. A donation of 72,000 doses of Cuban vaccines has also been given to the Caribbean Community (Caricom), but some countries are still waiting on approval by the World Health Organization.
“There are still a few hundred cases in Cuba daily, but without complications, and only one or two dying from COVID-19,” he said.
“We are now analysing to see if vaccines can be used in children two years and less. Imagine what would have happened to Cuba if we would be waiting for vaccines made by others! We have been facing the (US) blockade and we cannot go through the international assistance for buying medicines. What would we have done?
“So, it was a political decision in Cuba to use our knowledge and experience in producing medicines and vaccines against COVID. We know that there is a huge population in Jamaica still waiting on vaccines, but the international bureaucratic system is preventing that.”
The Cuban Government last week reopened the economy to unhindered travel which will, among other things, allow visitors to arrive in that country without having to do PCR or antigen COVID-19 tests, or even show proof of vaccination against the disease.