Cuba has sent 52 “revolutionary doctors” to Italy to provide assistance, for free, during the Coronavirus outbreak after having already dispatched doctors to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Suriname and Grenada.
Cuba’s doctors have been in the front line before on many occasions. They provided assistance in the fight against cholera in Haiti and also against ebola in West Africa in the 2010s. Speaking to Reuters, Graciliano Díaz, 64 explained.. “We are going to fulfill an honorable task, based on the principle of solidarity,”
Earlier this week, Cuba also allowed the cruise ship MS Braemar to dock after it had been adrift for about a week carrying close to 700 Brits.
The ship had five confirmed cases of Coronavirus and had already been refused docking by the US and various Caribbean countries. The Cuban government allowed the ship to dock, despite the fact there were no Cuban nationals onboard and then worked hand in hand with the British government to transport passengers to safety and chartered flights to get them back home.
The Independent reports that “the British Foreign Office had urged US officials to allow the ship to dock on American soil but were met with obstacles”, while Cuban officials simply accepted the request without question and in a spirit of solidarity, exclaiming the importance of “a shared effort to confront and stop the spread of the pandemic”.
So much for the UK/US ‘special relationship’ then?
Viva la cuba!
