– Country’s approach to Ebola.
Cuba has distinguished itself on the world stage by becoming the biggest single provider of healthcare workers to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the relatively small Caribbean country has contributed more than the Red Cross or richer nations.
“Cuba has provided the numbers and the people,” said Jose Luis Di Fabio, the WHO representative on the communist Caribbean island. “There are more human resources from Cuba than from many, many non-governmental organizations put together.”
Cuba’s large-scale deployment of medical staff to fight the devastating West African Ebola epidemic, continued last week with 91 Cuban doctors and nurses arriving in Liberia and Guinea. Cuba has already deployed 165 medical workers to Sierra Leone, bringing its total presence in the three countries to 256. Havana has pledged more health professionals to combat the deadly disease than any other government, with 461 Cuban doctors and nurses receiving specialist training for the mission to the affected countries.
“We cannot see our brothers from Africa in difficult times and remain there with our arms folded,” the Cuban Ambassador to Liberia, Jorge Lefebvre Nicolas, told reporters.
Cuba’s rapid and generous response to the killer epidemic has been lauded by humanitarian agencies, as well as its longstanding foes in Washington. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry, broke the ice of decades of frosty relations with the communist state when he praised Cuba for its “impressive” efforts to tackle Ebola. “Cuba, a country of just 11 million people, has sent 165 health professionals and it plans to send nearly 300 more,” he told foreign diplomats in Washington.
Since 1960, Cuba has sent 135,000 health workers overseas for emergency response or to work in under-served communities. Cuba has 50,000 doctors and nurses working in 66 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to the health ministry.
Extracted and modified from Yahoo News
