Cuban Doctors to Arrive in Ecuador Next Month

As part of a thousand-member medical cohort hired by Ecuador's government to supplement the local health care system, Cuban doctors will begin arriving in the country in December. Cuba's foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the arrangement was signed during a recent visit to Havana by Ecuadoran Health minister Roberto Morales.

Specialists in primary care, epidemiology and physical rehabilitation, who begin arriving from Cuba next month, "will help strengthen the capacities" of health officials in Ecuador, the foreign ministry said.

Cuba has long provided free medical assistance to poorer countries like Haiti, but in recent years has turned to exports of doctors as an important source of revenues.

Medical services is by far the biggest sector of the Cuban economy, generating about $8 billion a year. Tourism, the next biggest sector, generates $2.5 billion.

Tens of thousands of Cuban medical and other personnel are in Venezuela at the invitation of its leftist government, and this year Brazil hired 4,000 Cuban medical personnel to work in underserved areas.

In Ecuador, as in Brazil, local medical organizations have bridled at the programs, saying they subsidize the Cuban medical system at the expense of their own.

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The Ecuadoran Medical Federation has complained that $30 million used to pay the Cuban doctors could be used to hire and train Ecuadoran doctors in primary care and family medicine.

Source-AFP