Doctors have experienced “practices of income retention, long working hours, and the assignment of tasks unrelated to healthcare work”
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana/Miami, April 7, 2026 – This Tuesday the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) denounced “violations” of a structural nature of “labor, union, and human mobility rights” of professionals participating in Cuba’s medical missions abroad.
The report by this body of the Organization of American States (OAS) coincides with a pressure campaign by the United States on Cuba and, in particular, on its controversial medical missions and other sources of foreign currency.
The document, prepared jointly with the Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (REDESCA) of the IACHR, refers to “the existence of structural challenges in terms of decent work in medical missions.”
It includes testimonies from participants in these missions who reported violations related to “differential treatment and working conditions characterized by levels of remuneration that could be insufficient.”
Doctors also face the “absence of contracts or lack of knowledge of working conditions”
The text details that doctors also face the “absence of contracts or lack of knowledge of working conditions, lack of union freedom, as well as working conditions that do not ensure the dignity of the worker.”
Professionals participating in Cuban missions abroad have experienced “practices of income retention, long working hours, and the assignment of tasks unrelated to healthcare work,” the report specifies.
Nevertheless, the IACHR also recognizes the importance of the work of Cuban healthcare personnel in these mechanisms “in the provision of essential services for populations in vulnerable situations.”
The study also notes that the recipient states of these brigades regard them as a form of cooperation that “contributes to strengthening their public systems in contexts where medical care is limited or insufficient.”
In addition, the report says that, despite criticisms of their working conditions, doctors earn a salary in dollars that is better than what they would receive in their own country, and the Cuban Government generates foreign currency (which it says it uses in its own healthcare system).
Havana keeps an average of 85% of the payment from host countries
However, according to Prisoners Defenders, Havana keeps an average of 85% of the payment from host countries, retains doctors’ passports abroad, and penalizes those who leave the mission before the agreed time.
The 2024 Trafficking in Persons report by the U.S. State Department places Cuba’s income from the export of professional services between 6 and 8 billion dollars.
According to Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), exports of professional services represented more than 40% of the Island’s total external sales between 2018 and 2020.
Cuban medical brigades, established more than six decades ago and with more than 600,000 professionals deployed in 165 countries, according to official figures, have been one of the focal points of U.S. policy toward Cuba under President Donald Trump’s administration in his second term.
In recent months, and under pressure from Washington, Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Grenada, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago have suspended their medical cooperation with Cuba or reformed its terms.
The Cuban Government has denied these criticisms of Cuban medical missions and has described Washington’s pressure on Latin American and Caribbean countries as “fierce pressure” and “blackmail.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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