Cuban medical personnel working in Italy pose with the president of the Italian province of Calabria (center). Photo: Facebook.
The Italy-Cuba Friendship Association (ANAIC) has condemned the US government’s “shameful pressure” on Italy for hiring Cuban doctors.
The association, through a statement released last Thursday, March 22, stated that “the United States is carrying out an absurd interference in the internal affairs of Italy” by “asking for explanations” for the Italian health authorities’ hiring of Cuban doctors.
According to a report by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the US embassy in Rome demanded that the Italian Ministry of Health explain “the procedures for hiring Cuban professionals for a fixed duration [in Calabria] and their remuneration,” to determine if they violate Washington’s blockade against Cuba.
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On December 28, 2022, 51 Cuban doctors arrived in Calabria region of south Italy, including cardiologists, pediatricians and surgeons, to provide services in hospitals in the towns of Locri, Polistena, Gioia Tauro and Melito Porto Salvo.
The president of Calabria, Roberto Occhiuto, stated, “We are happy to have highly specialized doctors.”
Occhiuto stressed that his government is doing everything to guarantee the welfare of Calabria’s citizens, and trying to solve the state of emergency in the region’s public health sector.
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The assistance of Cuban doctors is “a concrete way of providing immediate responses to the needs of citizens, providing adequate services, ensuring operational health facilities and functioning hospitals throughout the region,” he said.
On January 8, 2023, the ANAIC, together with other Spanish, French and Swedish organizations, demanded that the European Parliament protect the countries of the European Union against the extraterritorial application of the “blockade imposed by the world’s leading power on a small Third World country.”
(Prensa Latina English) with editing by Orinoco Tribune
