CASTRIES, St Lucia (CMC) – St Lucia Prime Minster Phillip J Pierre says the United States has called on the Caribbean country to stop sending its nationals to study medicine in Cuba.

“I have a big problem. Many of our doctors got trained in Cuba and now the great United States has said we can’t do that any longer,” Pierre told the weekend meeting of the second World Congress on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities held in St Lucia.

“This is a major problem I have to face,” Pierre said, noting that most of the local doctors have been trained in Cuba.

“We also have Cubans who come over to work. So the American government has said we can’t even train them in Cuba. So I have a major issue on my hand,” Pierre told the conference.

Pierre told the audience that the situation adds pressure to an already strained health sector.

He cited the United States geopolitical pressures as the driving force behind this unprecedented shift, while urging the diaspora and innovative local initiatives to help the country navigate these new challenges.

Last month, the United States Embassy in Barbados said the Cuban regime’s “medical missions” programme, which has benefitted several Caribbean countries “relies on coercion and abuse.

“Cuban medical workers face withheld wages, confiscated passports, forced family separation and exile, restriction of movement through curfews and surveillance, intimidation and threats, and even pressure to falsify medical records and fabricate procedures. Many also endure excessive work hours and unsafe conditions,” the Embassy said.

Washington said it “is committed to exposing injustices and bringing an end to the Cuban regime’s coercive programme”.

Washington has also stepped up its attack on the Cuban health brigade programme, saying that the regime in Havana is profiting off the forced labour of medical personnel and that “renting out Cuban medical professionals at exorbitant prices and keeping the profit for regime elites is not a humanitarian gift.

“It is forced labour. It treats the doctors as commodities rather than human beings and professionals. The United States calls for an end to the Cuban regime’s coercive and exploitative labor export scheme.”

The chair of the Congress, Sir Cato Laurencin, an orthopedic surgeon and senior academic based in the United States, said St Lucia is not without options.