Dear Editor,

While the Government of Jamaica has offered assistance to Jamaican students studying in Cuba, there remains, in my opinion, a clear disconnect between the actual needs of these students and the current terms of the Government’s proposal.

To ensure the successful return of our students, there must be full disclosure of the underlying details of the offer, and the resulting aid must be entirely practical. A flight home solves only the first step of a complex problem.

My objective, through this letter, is to bridge these critical gaps. To achieve this, I have listed below specific ways the Government could help these students, and I am encouraging all Jamaican students currently in Cuba to participate in an immediate poll on these points. This data should form the basis for their formal petition to be shared directly with the Jamaican Government and the Jamaican public — ensuring absolute transparency, aligning expectations, and pre-empting future justifications for administrative inaction.

Jamaican medical students in Cuba wish to return home; however, their return must be supported by practical, coordinated government intervention. To ensure their safety, financial stability, and academic continuity, the Government’s assistance should include the following:

1) Diplomatic intervention for transcripts: The Jamaican Government must utilise diplomatic channels to assist students in securing their official academic transcripts from Cuban institutions prior to their departure. Without official records, these students face academic limbo

2)Unconditional repatriation flight: Government assistance for repatriation flights from Cuba to Jamaica must be based solely on student safety. A citizen’s extraction from a volatile environment must be driven solely by a mandate to protect human life, completely decoupled from whether a student intends to return to Cuba to continue his/her studies in the future. Safety cannot be made contingent upon future academic choices

3)Fair academic placement: Admission to The University of the West Indies (UWI) and the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) should be determined via transcript reviews and entrance examinations. Returning students must not be arbitrarily forced to restart from year one or pre-med modules, disregarding years of rigorous medical training already completed in Cuba

4) Financial alignment and scholarship support: There is a stark disparity between annual medical tuition in Cuba ($1,318,000) and Jamaica ($4,185,000). To prevent students from being forced to abandon their education due to financial hardship, it is recommended that the Government:

a) increases the Student Loan Bureau’s (SLB) loan cap from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 for these affected students

b) automatically grant these students the Dr Barry Wint Memorial Scholarship for the duration of their remaining studies at The UWI. This baseline support allows parents to maintain their current financial commitment of $1.3 million without facing academic disruption

These students are not returning home out of a lack of desire or discipline; they are being displaced by systemic, external crises entirely beyond their control. Like generations of brilliant, foreign-trained Jamaican doctors before them, they represent an invaluable asset to our strained local health-care infrastructure.

Let us ensure that the hand Jamaica extends to them is not just a temporary life raft, but a practical, sustainable pathway to the finish line.

Fiona Perkins

fionaperkins78@gmail.com