Cuba Imposes New Travel Restrictions for Doctors
HAVANA TIMES — The Cuban government announced today the imposition of travel restrictions on its physicians in the context of the recent massive exodus of doctors from the island, reported dpa news.
The measure announced in the official newspaper “Granma” returns, for doctors, to the situation before January 2013 when travel permits were required. The new restrictions take effect on December 7.
While not detailing the restrictions, the note said they will be valid for doctors’ “private trips abroad.”
“This does not mean that medical specialists cannot travel or live abroad, but the dates out of the country will be discussed,” added the text issued by the government, which also refers directly to the immigration policy of the United States as the cause of the current crisis in the region with migrants from the island.
The massive influx of Cubans seeking to travel to the United States has caused a migration crisis in recent weeks in Central America. Some 4,000 migrants from the island are stranded from mid-November on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
The Cuban government today blamed the crisis on the US immigration policy that explicitly gives facilities of residence to Cubans who reach the United States, even if they arrive illegally and referred in particular to doctors.
“The migration of Cuban health professionals is a concern for the country,” the statement said. Havana particularly criticized the US program to encourage doctors to abandon international missions, instituted by President Bush in 2006.
The wave of migrants from the island in the region is apparently due to speculation that Washington may soon remove the “Adjustment Act” which gives advantages to Cuban immigrants.
Rich countries cut down on the expensive education of medical doctors and rely on the supply of doctors from poor countries:
“Poland wants to lure 2,300 of its doctors to leave the NHS (UK’s National Health Service) and return home.
Witold Sobków, the Polish ambassador to the UK, revealed plans were being drawn up to persuade hundreds of health staff trained in Poland to return, declaring: ‘We want them back.’
He also cast doubt on proposals by Britain to limit access to benefits for EU migrants, insisting it will make little difference to the numbers of people who move to the UK in search of work and a better life.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2847086/Poland-wants-doctors-Ambassador-says-country-wants-lure-workers-NHS.html
Denmark, another EU country, handles the scarcity of medical doctors in the same way:
”How foreign hospitals are recruiting Polish doctors.” http://www.paragona.com/fileadmin/mediabank/www.paragona.com/documents/In_the_media/POLAND/20040308_pl_gazeta_wyborcza_pragona_denmark.pdf
So much for freedom.
A very bad idea but certainly not unexpected. If anyone needs to understand how important the internet is and how fearful the preset regime is of high tech communication it’s this story. The top of the bar education wise are the MD’s and they’re not going to sit still with this story. That’s my opinion and another reason why the change that is so needed in Cuba better start quicker for the sake of the Castro brothers political lives.
Good!