Italy hires 500 Cuban doctors to save lives in Calabria

Fifty-one Cuban medical specialists have arrived in Italy to make up for the shortage of personnel in public hospitals.

Over the years, public health spending cuts have slowed down the hiring of new doctors in all Italian regions, especially those with the biggest problems, such as Calabria in southern Italy.

“The hiring of Cuban doctors is not a structural solution. The open calls for doctors in general are the structural solution and we are doing it. It is an emergency measure, since we must have all the instruments in the toolbox to avoid the closure of hospitals,” declared Roberto Occhiuto, president of Calabria

Cuban doctors are known around the world for their competence and professionalism, but they also like to highlight a different aspect of their profession.

“It is a new experience, I will get to know a different culture and I will help people in need, which is the goal of our profession: to help the people who need our help the most,” said cardiologist Elizabeth Balbuena Delgado.

“We are a group of doctors from different specialties and we have come here to offer our little grain of sand to work together with the doctors of Calabria,” adds cardiologist Daysi Luperon Loforte.

Soon, the first Cuban doctors will start working in various hospitals in Calabria. For now, they are attending an Italian language course to improve their communication skills with their local colleagues and Italian patients. A necessary step so that these specialists can make their valuable contribution to the public health system of this region.

They study Italian at the University of Calabria, in Cosenza, and are just the first group of nearly 500 Cuban doctors who will work in Calabria hospitals for at least a year. Many have families waiting at home, but this doesn’t seem to be a problem for them.

“My family knows the disinterested and humanitarian training of Cuban doctors and understands the will of our people to provide medical aid to those countries, developed or underdeveloped, that need it,” says Dayli Ramos Reymont, a radiologist.

“Having saved the life of a patient in one of those hospitals that was about to close is worth more than a thousand debates. Even if the life was saved by a good Cuban doctor and not by an Italian doctor,” says Occhiuto.

Help save lives: a mission that Cuban doctors have been carrying out for many years in all parts of the world, now is the time to do it in Italy.

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