Cuba's international collaboration in health has expanded in recent decades, mainly in countries of the South, but it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements with Europeans.

By Roberto Morejón

Cuba's international collaboration in health has expanded in recent decades, mainly in countries of the South, but it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements with Europeans.

With the memory of the services provided by Antillean health professionals in northern Italy and Andorra during the pandemic, it is feasible to explore paths in that direction and others between Cuba and European nations.

Cuba and Portugal recently signed a memorandum of understanding in Havana to promote medical and biopharmaceutical cooperation.

The parties plan to establish joint work between universities to evaluate study programs and technical capacity.

The agreement puts on the table to make contacts on the high technology industry for the production of medicines.

The joint work with Portugal, in the process of becoming a reality, has a notorious precedent in Italy, where at present fifty doctors from the Caribbean nation are working, specifically in the south of the peninsula.

There, the health authorities had to face what they describe locally as a deterioration of services, mainly due to the departure of Italian doctors abroad.

Municipal authorities, eager to achieve fairer societies, contacted Cuba and, after talks, signed an agreement that will take almost half a thousand specialists to Italy in a year.  

The displacements of professionals in white coats from the land of José Martí to Italy and Andorra, in the latter case during the pandemic, and the cooperation plan drawn up with Portugal are part of a growing international work of Cubans.

More than 25,000 health professionals work in 56 countries, although the Caribbean nation also seeks exchange in the fields of science, biotechnology and medicine production.

Cubans emphasize that advances in health and technology should be used to save lives on the planet and if it were not for the U.S. blockade, this joint work mechanism could be expanded.

With the formulation of its own vaccines against Covid, novel drugs such as Heberprot P, to treat diabetic foot, and a promising clinical trial to evaluate an antidote created indigenously to treat Alzheimer's disease, the largest of the Antilles has made unquestionable progress.  

Globalizing experiences and practices is a necessity in the world.