Cuban doctors, just before their departure for Italy to help during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP/file photo.
By Miguel Manuel Fraga – Feb 25, 2026
The slanderous statements made by the Chargé d’Affaires of the US Embassy in Barbados, which appear in the article published by Dominica News Online on February 18, misrepresent our country’s international medical cooperation with falsehoods. This attack is part of a disinformation campaign that distorts the nature and denies the impact of a humanitarian program recognized by the international community, including organizations such as the World Health Organization.
It is the repeated use of lies that has led to the US government lacking credibility even among its own citizens. This is not Cuba’s claim, according to the US-based research center Pew Research. In December 2025, the credibility of the US government stood at 17%.
For more than six decades, Cuba, a country with limited resources and under a cruel regime of sanctions imposed by the most powerful nation on the planet, has demonstrated that true solidarity translates into concrete actions and tangible results. That is why more than 605,000 Cuban health professionals have voluntarily participated in missions in 165 countries, treating more than 2.3 billion patients, performing around 17 million surgeries, assisting in more than 5 million births, and saving more than 12 million lives.
During the same period, the US has carried out military interventions and covert operations in more than 25 countries. Various estimates put the number of deaths resulting from these military actions in the millions. And here we must include the more than 100 fatalities that, between late 2025 and early 2026, US bombings have caused in our Caribbean Sea, in what United Nations experts have defined as extrajudicial killings.
This difference in action between Cuba and the US was best defined by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, who said that Cuba sends “doctors, not bombs.”
Cuba’s collaboration in the health sector has been recognized even by voices within the United States itself. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama, during his visit to Cuba, stated:
“We’ve played very different roles in the world. But no one should deny the service that thousands of Cuban doctors have delivered for the poor and suffering. (Applause.) Last year, American health care workers — and the U.S. military — worked side-by-side with Cubans to save lives and stamp out Ebola in West Africa. I believe that we should continue that kind of cooperation in other countries.”
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It was not Cuba that ended this cooperation; it was a new U.S. administration that decided to escalate the bilateral conflict and, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, tightened its sanctions and even refused to sell Cuba oxygen for patients in this health emergency.
Our medical cooperation is not a business or an instrument of exploitation. It is solidarity that saves lives and responds to the request of sovereign governments whose citizens benefit from it. Participation in these missions is voluntary, regulated by bilateral agreements, respectful of international law and the rights of Cuban professionals, who return to their country with social and professional recognition.
The accusations of “forced labor” are baseless and respond to a political narrative.
The U.S. government is not only engaged in defamation but also threatens the countries where our collaborators provide their services.
History shows that where the U.S. manages to impose its will and eliminate the presence of Cuban health collaborators, the result is a deterioration in medical care and suffering for the population.
Today, as the US government continues to intensify its aggression and seeks to create a humanitarian crisis by attempting to prevent fuel from reaching Cuba, our resilient people are resisting, knowing that they are not alone because they have the solidarity of the world and will not give up.
Miguel Fraga is a Cuban diplomat currently working as ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to Dominica.
