BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — The United States on Friday told Caribbean countries that there are “alternative methods available” to recruit healthcare workers as it continued its criticism of the Cuban health brigade programme.

In a post on the US Embassy in Barbados Facebook page, Washington said it “is committed to holding accountable Cuban regime officials, foreign government officials and others for facilitating forced labour in Cuba’s medical missions”.

“By participating in these programmes, despite known human rights abuses, foreign governments become complicit in the regime’s tactics. Their actions directly contribute to the abuses of Cuban workers,” the statement said.

“There are alternative methods available for Caribbean nations to recruit foreign medical workers and ethically meet the healthcare needs of their people. The United States calls on all governments and peoples to reject forced labour schemes and join us in demanding accountability and respect for human rights.”

Earlier this week, the US Government said it had not “recently” spoken to St Lucia about international education after that country’s Prime Minister, Phillip J Pierre, said he had been asked to stop sending his nationals to study medicine in Cuba.

But the US did not, however, indicate whether or not it had done so previously, prior to Prime Minister Pierre’s last weekend statement that Washington had called on Castries to stop sending its nationals to study medicine in Havana.

READ: US denies asking St Lucia to stop sending nationals to Cuba to study medicine

“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 had told delegates attending the second World Congress on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities meeting in St Lucia.

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.

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.”