BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — The United States (US) Government said on Wednesday it had not asked St Lucia to stop sending its nationals to study medicine in Cuba, even though it doubled down on its claim that the Cuban health programme is “illegitimate”.

“The United States has not recently talked to St Lucia about international education and respects countries’ sovereign decisions regarding the education of their citizens. The United States continues to call for an end to exploitation and forced labour in the illegitimate Cuban regime’s overseas medical missions programme,” the US Embassy to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean and the OECS said in a brief sCtatement.

But in an immediate response, St Lucia’s Prime Minister Phillip J Pierre told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC), “I have absolutely no comment, and I understand the US position.”

Earlier this week, Pierre said there is no “imminent withdrawal” of St Lucia students studying medicine in Cuba, amid concerns that Washington had called on Castries to stop sending students to Havana.

“The students, those who are in Cuba, will continue to be in Cuba. There’s no imminent withdrawal of students,” Pierre told reporters ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Last weekend, Pierre told the second World Congress on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Meeting that the US has called on St Lucia 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 said.

He told reporters that his administration is now exploring its options.

“First of all, we have to assess where we are in terms of scholarships for our medical students. Secondly, we have to look to other countries,” Pierre said, making mention of Mexico and Africa, for example.

Cuba began offering significant, full scholarships to Caribbean and Latin American students to study medicine at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana, which was officially inaugurated in 1999.

The initiative was designed to train doctors from underserved communities across the region, offering free tuition, accommodation and boarding.

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 labour export scheme,” it added.

READ: US wants St Lucia to ban nationals from studying medicine in Cuba, says PM