ROSEAU, Dominica (CMC) — The Dominica Government on Monday said it would enter into personal contracts with medical professionals from Cuba as it sought to modify its long standing arrangement with Havana amid efforts by the United States (US) to get Caribbean countries to stop their support of the Cuban medical brigade programme.

The country’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Vince Henderson, said recently that there will be changes to the Cuban medical workers programme.

READ: Dominican gov’t to announce changes to Cuban health programme

“We recognise that we have to make some changes to the medical workers programme and we are grateful that the Government of Cuba has graciously agreed to work with us as we seek to meet new requirements for the Cuban health workers,” he said.

But speaking at a news conference on Monday, Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told reporters that the main change will be that the Government will sign contracts directly with the professionals.

“That’s the main change. So we will sign contracts with individual doctors and nurses and so that decision will have been taken as we intimated some time ago,” Skerrit said, noting that he had expressed that position “some time ago” in public statements.

Last month, the US 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 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”.

But Skerrit told reporters, “We will be signing direct contracts with the medical professionals who are engaged.”

He said that the agreement would not be signed with the Cuban Government, reiterating that it would be done “directly with the medical practitioners and nurses who are here”.

“They’ll enter into direct contracts, but they’ll remain at the service of the people, because let’s face it, my understanding from the hospital authority (is that) we have 11 medical staff assigned to one of the main ICU (Intensive Care Unit), none of whom are Cubans. So we want to appreciate the impact of the Cuban medical doctors and nurses on the health care of Dominica. So they’ll be engaged directly. The Ministry of Health will sign contracts with them directly,” he said.