Google – AFP, Carlos Batista (AFP), 19 June 2013
Cuban
doctor Abel Barrios (L) waits for patients in the village of San Mateo,
in
Antigua, Guatemala on February 12, 2009 (AFP/File, Eitan Abramovich)
|
HAVANA —
Cuba is out to boost its top export, an ever-more critical pillar of its
economy. And it's not sugar: hired-out Cuban doctors earn the Communist
government over six billion dollars a year.
Medical
services exports "are now the leading source of hard-currency income for
the nation, and have great potential to keep growing," Foreign Trade
Minister Rodrigo Malmierca said at a recent event.
About
40,000 Cubans doctors are working on contracts in 66 countries in Asia, Africa
and Latin America.
The next big-ticket
client could be Brazil -- the booming South American giant is considering
hiring 6,000 Cuban doctors to help cover its health care staff shortage.
It may be
somewhat surprising that Cuba -- once known for its exports like sugar, cigars,
citrus fruits and rum -- now has four main pillars of its state-controlled
economy.
A Cuban doctor
(R) checks a group of
men at a senior home on April 19, 2012
in Havana
(AFP/File)
|
Impressively,
in a Caribbean country of just 11 million people, remittances -- money sent by
relatives abroad -- also end up giving $2.5 billion to the Cuban government.
Why? Because their family members here spend it mostly at stores owned by the
government.
Each of
those big-ticket, hard-currency spinners however pales in comparison to the
whopping $6 billion Cuba earns each year in exporting professional services --
sports trainers, teachers and especially doctors -- on overseas contracts.
At home,
doctors earn between $25 and $41 dollars each month, and they are not allowed
to leave Cuba at will.
If they
were to head to the nearby US state of Florida, where Cubans can work legally
just after arrival, they could earn a physician's salary of $150,000 per year
or more.
Private
mechanics, waiters at restaurants catering to tourists, and even hairdressers
can earn far more than do highly-trained doctors in Cuba, making overseas
medical missions appealing to this country's doctors.
The Cuban
government acts as a middleman in the transactions, hiring out their medical
staff to foreign countries.
The amounts
Havana charges for the services of their workers are not made public, but
payment, in hard currency, is for significantly more than what the doctors are
paid personally.
The government keeps the difference between its contracting price and what it pays the Cuban worker monthly.
The government keeps the difference between its contracting price and what it pays the Cuban worker monthly.
It's a big
business that is getting bigger: Havana has said it wants to increase the
number of countries paying to import Cuban doctors. In a nation proud of its
public health tradition, it also is charity in some cases: Cuba gives doctors'
services to 40 countries that cannot afford to pay for them for free.
President
Raul Castro's government recently vowed that medical missions, which started
under his brother Fidel Castro back in 1998, would be maintained and even
expanded.
Patients
are treated in an intensive care unit on December 22, 2010 at
a hospital in
Havana (AFP/File)
|
"We
are going to continue assistance in solidarity to countries that cannot pay for
these medical services, as in the case of Haiti," said Health Minister
Roberto Morales.
At the
moment, 26 nations are paying the Cuban government to send them doctors, at a
salary level determined by the Cuban government.
Morales
said money earned from the medical contracting arrangement with Venezuela, for
example, "helps pay for expenses we incur in other countries" and is
also used "to improve workers' health care and working conditions."
The
politically based economic arrangement with Venezuela harkens back to the Cold
War, when Cuba exported its sugar to the East bloc for cut-rate Soviet oil.
Cuba hopes
one day to be able to tap yet another source of revenue: the cash-strapped
government believes there are vast crude oil assets off the island's north
coast.
But as long
as it is unable to access them, Cuba remains economically isolated and
dependent on Venezuela, which provides the communist island with cut-rate oil
and is the single largest importer of Cuba's medical export workers, taking in
about 30,000 of them.
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