FROM MONOCLE 2 MAY 2020
OUTPOST NEWS / ST KITTS AND NEVIS
Life and breath
The Caribbean island of St Kitts – formally known as St Christopher – was the first British colony in the West Indies and the most recent to gain independence, in 1983 (writes Louis Harnett O’Meara). It was granted the status of a sovereign nation in partnership with the small, rotund island of Nevis, which lies just 4km south of St Kitts. The two hilly isles are now home to a collective population of 50,000, though Nevis operates with relative autonomy.
THE COVER PAGE
What’s the big news this week?
St Kitts and Nevis have done very well in their handling of coronavirus. From the time it became obvious it would reach here, our government started to prepare. When they saw the first two or three cases, they shut down the island. It worked. We peaked at 15 cases and now six have recovered. We’ve also received help from friendly nations like Taiwan and Cuba – there’s a contingent of Cuban doctors and nurses in St Kitts right now, who’ve come to fight the virus.
St Kitts and Nevis have done very well in their handling of coronavirus. From the time it became obvious it would reach here, our government started to prepare. When they saw the first two or three cases, they shut down the island. It worked. We peaked at 15 cases and now six have recovered. We’ve also received help from friendly nations like Taiwan and Cuba – there’s a contingent of Cuban doctors and nurses in St Kitts right now, who’ve come to fight the virus.
This magnificent programme of Medical Assistance where it is needed get very little notice from elsewhere. State Department of the USA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) actively discourages nations from accepting Cuban Doctors. They tried it with Qatar (there is a hospital completely staffed by Cuban medical personnel) and many other countries in the region (18 countries in the region have received Cuban medical assistance to fight Corona Virus). While USA objects to Cuban assistance, I do not see them sending USA doctors whether native born or Foreign born to relieve the pressure felt in the creaking medical systems in the region . The American Medical Association even had an article how doctors in private practice can dip into the government coffers to make up for the income lost because patients choose not to come to see the doctors (fee for service). I have not heard of a single American doctor (native or foreign born) volunteering their services to combat Corona. Isn’t there something immoral taste to all this?
So nice to read an article in the issue of St Kitts and Nevis Observer
Cuba: A Case Study in Handling Coronavirus
By
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Cuban Doctors ready for International Missions.
The pleasure of having extra time to read
I like reading the daily and the weekend edition of MONOCLE they send me by email.
So I was introduced to the St Kitts Nevis Observer tonight and how nice to read about the Cuban delegation which is already there to help them! (I am extremely proud of this)
During the Ebola epidemic Cuba sent a team of 330 doctors and nurses to the front line! Only one got infected and he later recovered and thus no loss of life.
Cuba has sent around 1,200 healthcare workers largely to vulnerable African and Caribbean nations but also to rich European countries such as Italy and Andorra that have been particularly hard hit by the novel coronavirus.
“These are times of solidarity and cooperation. If we act together, we can halt the spread of coronavirus in a faster and more cost effective manner,” Cuba’s ambassador to South Africa, Rodolfo Benítez Verson, said in a statement.
Can USA send 216 medical doctors to South Africa? when there are lack of doctors to look after the destitute Native Americans in Great Plains area ? A country that neglects its own population cannot be expected to be generous with human potential to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters.
Sunset in La Habana, Cuba.
From an article from LSE by Helena Yoffe
This is not the first time that Cuba’s global health leadership has taken the world by surprise.
In 2014, during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when the WHO called for “compassionate doctors and nurses, who will know how to comfort patients despite the barriers of wearing PPE [personal protective equipment] and working under very demanding conditions”, Cuba was first to respond and sent the largest medical contingent. Jorge Pérez Ávila, then director of Havana’s hospital of tropical diseases (IPK), told me that over 10,000 Cuban medical professionals had volunteered for the mission. From these, a group of 256 were selected, all of whom had previously faced natural disasters and disease outbreaks in developing countries. They went to Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, countries where Cuban medical missions already operated, and quickly reduced their patients’ mortality rate from 50 to 20 per cent, as well as introducing an education programme to prevent the disease from spreading.
