Italy turns to Cuba to help revive ailing health system

[El Presidente]

The overseas brigades generate huge revenues for Cuba’s communist government, making it a crucial economic lifeline for the country. The missions are also a way of increasing Havana’s soft power. However, Fonseca rejects critics who say health workers are being exploited in order to fill the regime’s coffers.

“This is a total lie,” he said. “There is no obligation for us to do this. We are here because we want to be here. We also learn from the experiences. It is a two-way exchange.”

‘Giving us oxygen’: Italy turns to Cuba to help revive ailing health system

Almost 500 Cuban health workers deployed across Calabria amid severe shortage of doctors

 

n the operating theatre at a hospital in Calabria, Asbel Díaz Fonseca and his team are preparing to perform abdominal surgery on a man in his sixties. They deliberate over which medical technique to use – the French or US model – before deciding on the latter.

 

But their main topic of pre-op conversation is food, namely which pizza is best: Neapolitan or Calabrian. There are subtle differences between the two, they say, but with a Neapolitan medic in the room, diplomacy prevails and they conclude that both types taste as good as each other.

 

This may not sound out of the ordinary for Italian chitchat, but Fonseca is not a local man. He has worked at the Santa Maria degli Ungheresi hospital in Polistena, a town surrounded by mountains in the southern Italian region, for a year. But he is originally from Cuba.

CONTINUED

[Corylax18]

5 hours ago, El Presidente said:

“This is a total lie,” he said. “There is no obligation for us to do this. We are here because we want to be here. We also learn from the experiences. It is a two-way exchange.”

Haha. If 7 bucks a month salary for a doctor can be considered an "exchange." Don't most doctors make more than that per minute?