14ymedio, Havana, November 12, 2024 — The Secretariat of Strategic Planning of Honduras, the entity in charge of hiring 96 Cuban doctors to provide services in that country, “does not maintain an employment relationship” with the specialists, nor has it “made payments through its payroll.” The information appears in two official memoranda to which the newspapers El Heraldo and La Prensa had access, and which reveal irregularities in the process of hiring doctors.
“If it is not the Secretariat of Planning, how are the salaries of Cuban doctors being covered?” both media ask. The health officials of the Government of Xiomara Castro, an ally of Havana, remain silent.
El Heraldo and La Prensa also claim that Cuban doctors now occupy management positions and are “hostile people,” according to interviews they have conducted with Honduran health personnel, their subordinates.
The Honduran Minister of Health, Carla Paredes, explained last February that she was in charge of signing the agreement with Cuba for the specialists, valid for two years. With this she has tried to alleviate the crisis of the Honduran health system, which lacks medical and technical personnel, medicines and safe facilities. She said that the Secretariat would take care of everything related to the specialists.
Paredes has not clarified the source of the 1,000 dollars, which, as reported last May by the Cuban ambassador to Honduras, Juan Roberto Loforte, is the agreed payment for each specialist for eight hours a day of service in the main hospitals of the country. For its part, the Medical College of Honduras, which has spoken out against the hiring of the Cuban medical brigade, says that the Honduran Government pays 2,000 dollars a month to the Island for each doctor, in addition to guaranteeing them a house, vehicle and food.
The group, made up of surgeons, orthopedists, neurosurgeons, vascular surgeons, oncologists, internists, psychiatrists, epidemiologists, family and geriatric doctors, has been in Honduras for eight months. Using Loforte’s figures, Cuba has thus received 768,000 dollars.
The presence of Cuban doctors in Honduras began in 1998, after the passage of Hurricane Mitch. During that time, according to Loforte, they have attended 29 million consultations and 69,000 eye surgeries within the Operation Miracle program.
As part of its relationship with the Island, the Government of Honduras also agreed to send 170 general practitioners to the Island to train in one of the 23 specialties offered by Cuban universities. This scholarship program, the diplomat added, is similar to the one that his government also has with other countries such as Mexico, and for which it pays Cuba 1,209,950 dollars a month.
The Medical Association of Honduras has insisted that the hiring of Cuban doctors not only violates the Constitution but also could be facilitating the entry of Cuban soldiers into the country, as claimed by the Madrid-based organization Prisoners Defenders. Its director, Javier Larrondo, said in August 2022 that there were “State Security agents” among the first group of 641 doctors from Cuba that arrived in Mexico.
Prisoners Defenders has repeatedly accused Mexico, Italy and Qatar of promoting and being complicit in the slavery of Cuban doctors, one of the main sources of hard currency for the Cuban regime.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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