The Min­istry of Health and the Cuban Med­ical Brigade, com­mem­o­rat­ed 20 years of med­ical col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Re­pub­lic of Cu­ba with a com­mem­o­ra­tive event held at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel on Wednes­day.

Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, stat­ed that the transna­tion­al arrange­ments with the Cuban gov­ern­ment and the Med­ical Brigade dis­plays that T&T con­tin­ues to utilise the ex­cep­tion­al ser­vices of Cuban health­care pro­fes­sion­als who have been in­stru­men­tal to the Pub­lic Health­care Sys­tem.

In Ju­ly 2003, T&T be­gan its re­la­tion­ship with the Cuban Med­ical Brigade, when a group of Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es ar­rived in Trinidad to ease the coun­try’s short­age of med­ical per­son­nel. The first group from Cu­ba in­clud­ed 30 nurs­es and six doc­tors who were re­ceived and sta­tioned at hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres through­out the var­i­ous Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs).

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh con­grat­u­lat­ed Her Ex­cel­len­cy Tania Diego Olite, Cuban Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­nary and Plenipo­ten­tiary, of the Re­pub­lic of Cu­ba, for her in­valu­able role as an in­ter­me­di­ary of good­will and as an ad­vo­cate for in­ter­na­tion­al med­ical sup­port, which has brought vi­tal med­ical re­lief to the most vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions around the globe in the most trou­bling med­ical emer­gen­cies.