The ignored effort of Cuban doctors in Haiti

The massive earthquake which devastated Haiti in January of this year saw a huge aid effort launched by the international community.

But there was one country that was first on the scene and whose extremely important medical assistance has been largely ignored by the media.

That country was Cuba, who in the last few years has become a generous and specialist provider of first response medical teams to crisis zones.

A small nation with a troubled economy, the one thing Cuba does possess is a free and compulsory education system.

Combined with a strong commitment to tertiary education, this has meant that Cuba has one of the highest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world and is able to provide a steady supply of trained medical personnel for international missions.

According to official Cuban figures, 35,000 Cuban healthcare professionals are working in 70 different countries.

Though still less than the mighty Red Cross, this is on par with the more high profile Medecins Sans Frontier (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) – a French humanitarian organisation.

It must be noted that not all of Cuba’s overseas doctors are working on humanitarian missions; some are working on medical contracts which provide revenue for the Cuban government.

However, many of these medical workers have been at the forefront of providing emergency medical care after disasters like the Asian Tsunami and the 2005 Pakistan earthquake where they remained longer than anyone else.

Cuba’s commitment to being a global leader in this area was cemented in 2005 when then President Fidel Castro announced the formation of the Henry Reeve Medical Brigade to assist countries affected by natural disasters or serious epidemics.

In that year, Fidel Castro made an offer to the United States to send 1,100 doctors to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

America didn’t take up Cuba’s offer – unsurprising given their economic blockade of the island and general dislike for Cuba’s communist model. But it did lead to the official formation of a large disaster response team.

In the case of the Haitian earthquake, many Cuban doctors were already in place as part of a medical cooperation agreement between the two nations.

Once the quake struck, more Cuban medical personnel were flown in, with Cuba ultimately providing over 1,000 different medical personnel, the largest contingent of any country or organisation (the Red Cross provided about 600 and MSF about 300).

So why haven’t we heard more about this in the Western media? It’s partly because such media tends to be western focused, looking for stories that the folks back home will relate to.

Self-interest can also influence the content and there was no shortage of countries and organisations keen to be seen to be doing the right thing.

This was duly noted by the Italian special envoy to Haiti Guido Bertolaso who caused a diplomatic storm by saying the aid effort in Haiti was uncoordinated and inefficient with too many organisations “putting on a vanity show for the television cameras instead of rolling up their sleeves.”

Indeed, the large Western aid organisations have specialist media officers set up in disaster zones to provide quick, easy sound bites to reporters who themselves enjoy a good relationship with the organisations and choose not to source other viewpoints.

So apart from a few fleeting mentions, the work of the Cuban doctors goes largely unreported in the western media, which is odd considering the Haiti disaster has seen the first case of Cuba/US cooperation for 50 years.

Cuba allowed US military planes to fly through Cuban airspace to evacuate earthquake victims, and the US is making medical supplies available to Cuban doctors in Haiti.

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has also publicly thanked Cuba for its efforts and cooperation.

So while their efforts may not be paying off in the media, Cuba’s humanitarianism is making a big difference for thousands of Haitians, and could actually end up helping themselves on the world stage as well.

By Jo Blick