9:25
300 Cuban healthcare workers said goodbye to Jamaica. Novelin Ebanks is 73 years old and she is going blind. The surgery to save her sight was booked. It was free. A clinic in Kingston had been built for exactly this. Staffed by doctors who had come a long way to run it. Then with no warning, it was gone. The clinic emptied. The doctors left. The operation vanished. due to a decision made in Washington, $2,500 km away. Now, Novel has to find $2,200 she doesn't have for an operation she was promised for free or she loses her sight. And she is one of millions. Since Donald Trump began his
second term, Jamaica, Guatemala, Guyana, Anduras, the Bahamas, Antigua, and Barbuda, Paraguay, Grenada, Italy, St. Vincent and the Grenardines all have agreed to expel doctors. But these aren't their own doctors. These are Cuban doctors and there's no one to replace them. In Honduras, people stood in town squares weeping as they said goodbye to the doctors who had been treating them for years for free. The first and last doctors many of them will ever see. Why would a government push out doctors they can't replace? Because the United States told them to.
Jamaica, Honduras, and others have already pulled back after US claims that Cuba's medical missions amount to forced labor. But in BISE, Cuban doctors remain vital, especially in rural clinics and specialist care. The doctors vanishing from these villages come from Cuba, a tiny, poor, blockaded island, one that has developed a vaccine for lung cancer, eliminated diseases, and somehow sends more doctors around the world than anyone else. Cuba calls it internationalisma. Washington calls it slavery. I want to tell you about
these doctors, about this island, about their project, and why Washington wants it destroyed. Cuba, a small island, 10 million people, under a US blockade for over 60 years, the longest siege in human history. A blockade imposed after the Cubans overthrew a USbacked dictator. It was followed by a series of American bombings on Cuban infrastructure, invasions, assassinations, and terror attacks on Cuban civilians. Today, Cuba sends more health workers
to the developing world than any other country on the planet. There are roughly 20,000 of them spread across roughly 50 countries at any time. Since 1960, around 600,000 Cubans have provided free healthcare in around 160 countries. This is down from 50,000 before Trump's first term, treating people in mountain villages, refugee camps, and disaster sites. They provide healthcare in areas where previously there wasn't any. Between 1999 and 2015 alone, Cuban doctors abroad saved an estimated 6 million lives. They carried out 1.4 billion medical consultations,
10 million surgeries, and they delivered 2.6 million babies. Rescue experts, medical teams, and supplies are being mobilized as the world responds to South Asia's massive earthquake. An earthquake killed 70,000 people in Pakistan administered Kashmir in 2005. Pakistan is a US client state. It had no diplomatic relations with Cuba. Still, Cuba sent 2,400 medics. They set up 32 field hospitals in the mountains. Living with the victims in the area, the Cubans treated over 1.7 million people. They stayed for 7 months and they treated 73% of the victims. They charged
nothing and they donated the field hospitals when they left. 1,000 Pakistani students were brought back to Havana on free medical scholarships. They were given years of free medical training and in return they had to promise to return to Pakistan to treat the poor. One student stated, "We are young people from poor families who would never have been able to study medicine. As a result, I cannot find words to thank Cuba for its solidarity." During just the year 2005 and 2006, Cuban emergency brigades saved thousands of lives after flooding in Guatemala, Mexico,
Bolivia, and earthquakes in China and Indonesia. When Ebola tore through West Africa in 2014, Cuba sent the largest contribution of health staff by any single country. It was the first country to respond to the World Health Organization's appeal. When CO 19 hit, Cuban brigades showed up in over 40 countries to treat over 1 million people. In March of 2020, when Italy was the epicenter of the world, when people were dying in hospital corridors, Cuba's white coats came to help. Cuban medical workers were then recruited to stay in Italy and keep healthcare available
in poorer regions like Calabria. Ban Kimmoon, then Secretary General of the United Nations in January of 2014 commented on how in his visits to some of the most forgotten areas of the world, there was a common factor, the presence of either Cuban doctors or doctors trained in Cuba. He said they are often the first to arrive and the last to leave. But how does a poor blockaded island end up being the world's doctor? Before 1959, Cuba's health system was a disaster. There was just one rural hospital with just 10 beds for the entire island. Life expectancy was 59 years. 1 in 10 infants died before their first birthday. And 80% of rural children had intestinal
parasites. For the vast majority of Cubans, healthc care did not exist. Cuba was instead a playground for American tourists, the ultra wealthy, and the mafia. Americans controlled the farms, the land, the mines, the railways, the electricity, and the telephone lines along with the casinos and the brothel. The majority of the population was undernourished. 1/3 had no work. 40% could not read or write. This was one of the most unequal countries in the world. Or as one American survey noted at the time, people are living in conditions of stagnation, misery, and desperation that are difficult to
believe. The island was under the rule of the dictator Fuencio Batista, kept in power through torture and US backing. Over 20,000 people were murdered by Batista's dictatorship from 1952 to 1958. The American ambassador noted, "I do not think we have ever had a better friend." Then came the Cuban Revolution. Batista was removed. Cuba took control of its own resources and the US blockaded the island. They then tried to invade, lost, and then maintained the blockade. One of the very first things that Fidel Castro did was declare healthcare a human right
free for everyone. Medical school graduates were required to serve a year in rural areas, a rule that was started by a student vote. People who had never seen a doctor suddenly had healthcare. By 1970, the number of rural hospitals in Cuba had gone from 1 to 53. Gastroenteritis infection respirator. Fore! Foreign!
They launched vaccination campaigns. Polio, malaria, dteria, measles, all wiped out. Basic checkups to the most complex surgeries are free of charge. Dental care, medicines, and home visits from doctors are all covered. Today, Cuba has the highest ratio of doctors to people in the world. about 9.5 doctors per thousand people, three times the density of the United States or the United Kingdom, up from less than one doctor per thousand in 1959. And since our health system is based on the idea that anything we have has to be universally available
for everyone because the Cuban health system is free for all, it's a universal coverage. And then that create it created the need for uh an independent and self- sustaining national industry that will reduce the cost so we could take it to everyone. Today Cuban medical workers labor under extremely tough conditions. The blockade stops them from importing tools, equipment, and medicine. And they have to work long hours to keep their communities healthy. But the results of this are that Cuba's health outcomes compare more to developed nations than its Caribbean neighbors.
Cuba spends less than $3,000 per year per person on healthcare compared to 13,000 per year in the United States. But Cuba's infinite mortality rate is historically lower than the United States. Life expectancy is nearly identical. Cuba was the first country in the world to halt motherto-child transmission of HIV. Cuba quickly began to export its medical project. In 1960, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded hit Chile. Cuba formed emergency medical brigades and sent them in with six field hospitals. In 1963, Cuba sent doctors to the
newly independent Algeria. French colonizers had finally been driven out at the cost of millions of lives. There were next to no doctors in the country. Cuba showed up and charged nothing. They helped Algeria build a public health care system from scratch. In 1965, Cuban medics were deployed in the Congo, where there had been just nine doctors. When a polio outbreak hit, Cuba ran the continent's first antipolio campaign. 61,000 children were vaccinated. No other medics were on the ground. Without the Cubans, those children were going to die. Between 1975 and 1988,
more than 300,000 Cubans fought in Angola to help fight off an invasion by apartheite South Africa backed by the United States. Alongside them were over 50,000 Cuban medical personnel and engineers. Angolans were brought back to Cuba on medical scholarships, training a generation of Angolan doctors. Nelson Mandela spoke highly of this effort since it ensured the freedom of Angola, Namibia, and contributed to the end of apartheite. Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricultural workers, but never as colonizers. They have shared the same trenches
as us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment, and apartheite. By 1988, over 30 African countries were receiving Cuban medical support. In areas with Cuban doctors, infant mortality dropped from 59 to 7.8 per 10,000 in Ghana, from 48 to 10.6 in Iratraa, and from 131 to 35.5 in Equatorial Guinea. In 1972, a massive earthquake destroyed downtown Managua. Cuban doctors were among the first to arrive, even though Nicaragua's US backed dictator, Anastasio Samosa, actively helped the United States carry out terror attacks on Cuba. Despite this, Cuba assisted the country throughout the crisis, treating the survivors while the Samosa family embezzled tens of millions
in international aid. Following the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986, there was a 30-fold increase in cancer in children in the surrounding area. Cuba volunteered to take in 22,000 children of Chernobyl and their families beginning in 1990. This was just as the Soviet Union was collapsing, taking with it 85% of Cuba's trade. Despite the onset of the special period in Cuba, an era of economic collapse, Cuba continued to treat these children, carrying out complicated surgeries and treatments for free until 2011 when the program concluded. When asked how
treating these children could be justified during such hard times, a Cuban doctor responded, "These are children, extremely sick children. How could we not treat them?" Cuba took on the entire cost of treating the Ukrainian children. One mother of a patient stated the medical care for her son at home in Ukraine would cost over $15,000. Without Cuba, the child would not have been treated. Operation Miracle set up in 2004 provides free eye operations in Cuba. By 2019, Operation Miracle had restored the vision of over 4 million people in over 30 countries. In Guatemala,
the Cubans arrived in 1998, soon after the USI Israelbacked genocide of the indigenous population. They went deep into rural areas that had never seen a doctor and restored the eyesight of over 120,000 Guatemalans. Cuba refused to let these countries grow dependent on Cubans. Since 1963, Cuba had been training medical staff in Cuba and abroad for free. In 1999, Cuba opened the ELAM, the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, the largest medical school in the world. The school offers full scholarships to foreign students, mostly from
lowincome families with good academic records, six years of medical education and room and board. And it's all free. Over 100,000 medical students from over 105 countries, including the United States, have graduated from Cuban schools. The students must have high school diplomas, be under 25, and come from the poorest parts of their home countries. This assures that they are committed to return to their communities so they can make change in their own villages and neighborhoods.
There has been a huge earthquake magnitude 7.0 just off the coast of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, as the world watched in horror, Cuban doctors were first on the ground because they had already been there since 1998. Laaz Hospital, it is now being administered by Cuban medical personnel. They are giving medical attention, quality medical care to severely injured people. 6 to 700 patients a day, several dozen surgeries a day. They have three surgical operating theaters going around the clock 24/7. And it is one of the only places deep in the city where
Haitians can go and be treated and have a reasonable expectation of surviving. Within 24 hours of the earthquake, Cuban doctors had completed 1,000 emergency surgeries. Cuba provided the largest medical mission and cared for 40% of the earthquake victims. Fox News reported that Cuba offered no assistance whatsoever. CNN interviewed a Cuban doctor and told their audience that he was Spanish. The US sent the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, and stayed for just 7 weeks. In that time, they treated 871 patients. In that same time frame, Cubans had treated 227,000. About 67 cents of every dollar of aid sent to Haiti ended up going to companies in Washington DC. They made a profit off the destruction of Haiti. The Cubans stayed and saved 429,000 lives.
After Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans in 2005, Cuba offered to send over 1,500 doctors specifically trained to handle those kinds of disaster conditions. As a show of support, Cuba renamed their disaster response brigades after Henry Reev, an American who fought for Cuban independence in the 1800s. The United States rejected the offer. People in desperate need of help didn't get it, but the brigades kept their new name. Cuba has the developing world's most established biotechnology industry. It produces 70% of its own medicines which it provides to
its own people and to the developing world at a fraction of the cost of drugs produced by big pharma. Cuban biotechnology products include a vaccine for lung cancer called Simma sold at $1 a dose. Cuba has developed the world's first menitis B vaccine and a drug that reduces the risk of amputation for diabetics by 80%. and their pioneering treatments for Alzheimer's. The US blockade stops this industry from reaching its full potential and forces people outside of Cuba to amputate limbs or die of lung cancer unnecessarily for the Miami lobby. In 1991,
the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost all its trading partners. Its economy was crippled and it was alone. It was at this moment where Cuba was at its most vulnerable, where its people were at their most desperate, that Bill Clinton tightened the blockade on Cuba. The US blockade on Cuba is the longest, most comprehensive economic blockade in history. In 1960, a State Department memo stated their goal was to make the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba to decrease monetary and real wages to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government. We had
all of our chromatographic systems in Cuba were manufactured by a Swedish company called uh LKB. Then overnight there was an acquisition of LKB by a US company and immediately we had to change all the systems in the country because we they communicated that they can no longer sell to us. North America. The blockade has cost Cuba about $170 billion. It is not just that the United States won't trade with Cuba. It's that the United States punishes everyone else for trying to trade with Cuba. If
a product contains Americanmade components, it cannot be sold to Cuba. The United States has sanctioned French products simply because they contained Cuban nickel. The United States applies its laws extr territorially on other nations to prevent trade with Cuba. Banks anywhere can be fined billions of dollars just for processing Cuban transactions because the global financial system is controlled by the US dollar. When a ship docks in Cuba, it cannot dock in the United States for 6 months. Businesses know they can extort Cuba because they have no other options. Cuba
is forced to sell its goods at low prices and import everything at much higher prices. During the special period, Cuba made a decision. Care would continue for the poorest countries for free. But now, countries that could pay would pay. The turning point was 2004. Venezuela had oil. Cuba had doctors. Cuban doctors went into Venezuelan slums. And Venezuela sent Cuba subsidized oil. In 2013, Cuba launched an agreement with Brazil that sent over 20,000 Cuban doctors working in unserved regions of Brazil to provide healthcare to over $113 million patients. By 2018,
medical services were Cuba's biggest export, bringing in $7 billion a year. That money paid for Cuban schools, Cuban hospitals, and Cuban food subsidies. By the mid200s, Cuba had pulled itself out of the special period. The United States government saw Cuba's economic recovery and sought to end it and to end the medical program. Specifically, the United States began to claim that Cuba was using slaves. Um, they basically operate as forced labor.
John Kirk is a scholar who has studied Cuba's medical missions for decades. He said, "I interviewed 270 Cuban doctors, nurses, and technicians. None of them said that they had been forced to work. We love the people. We genuinely love the job. For a lot of us, when we go on exchange and come here, we do it for our family. It was very good for us. It means a lot to us. We are able to support our family back home. End quote. These missions are voluntary. People sign up for many reasons. To get medical experience and have a desire to help or travel or because the pay is much higher than on the island. The Cuban state keeps the majority of the payment
for these medical services, sometimes up to 80%. In Brazil, the Cuban state received $3,620 per doctor per month. The doctors were housed and fed and received $1,400 per month. In Italy, it was €1,200. In poorer countries, where they only cover the medical team's expenses, their salary is just a few hundred per month, compared to about $40 per month on the island. The United States called this 21st century slavery. Now, let's ignore the fact that every major US corporation uses slave labor. Be it Congolese child slaves mining cobalt or the millions of women in sweat shops producing cheap
clothes. One doctor, Yanili Mendes, spent 5 years in Venezuela. She stated it's not slave labor. She wished that the split was fairer, but also recognized that it funds Cuba's subsidized food, free hospitals, and free medical schools back home, the same system that trained her. And the reason that US call that a slave for human trafficking has nothing to do with the international felony of human trafficking. It has to do with the necessity that United States has to justify a policy that is impossible to hold in front of public escrinian. United States cannot
tell the third world countries that it is right to prevent people who need medical service to give up to those service by the Cuban medical brigades just because they don't want or just because it doesn't match their policy to have international recognition admiration that is not new. for Cuba has been sending doctors abroad since the 1960s. The conditions haven't materially changed. Suddenly, after the medical exports pulled Cuba out of the special period and just one year
after Cuba offered to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2006, the Bush administration launched the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program. This was a scheme that encouraged Cuban doctors to defect, to abandon their missions, where in many cases they were the only healthcare available, and move to the United States. About 2% of Cuban medics took the offer. This is where the US suddenly began speaking about Cuban state sponsored human trafficking. A confidential 2006 diplomatic memo stated that they were always looking for human interest stories and other news
that shattered the myth of Cuban medical prowess. The stories of enslaved Cuban doctors in the US media aren't organic. They use extremely scarce sources almost exclusively from Cubans applying for a US visa. This weaponized brain drain was pushed for by the CubanAmerican National Foundation, a lobby based on APAC, anti- to terror attacks that have killed dozens of Cubans and tourists in Cuba. Just weeks before and were saying tearful goodbyes to their Cuban doctors, a confidential US strategy memo was sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It described their
plan to deny the Cuban regime critical revenue by destroying the medical brigades, which the State Department claimed were a source of hard cash for the Cuban government. The problem wasn't slavery. It was that Cuba was earning currency it could use to fund services in Cuba. In a normal country, the split between the state and the doctors could be improved. But Cuba is not normal. It is blockaded and cannot trade normally, but still needs revenue in order to feed and service its population. The US blockades Cuba as an act of collective punishment. When Cuba discovers a collective way
to survive, the United States attacks that, too. Today, Marco Rubio is a major voice for attacks on Cuba. known in Latin America as Narco Rubio for his ties to drug traffickers. His political career was bankrolled by Miami Cuban sugar barons whose own family fortunes were built on slavery. He is currently pushing for visa bans on anyone complicit with the medical program. The medical program continues to generate muchneeded revenue for Cuba, but the island still offers hundreds of scholarships annually for lowincome international students. It has afforded a foreigner like me the
opportunity to study a career free of charge while many of my colleagues are thousands of dollars in debt after attending medical schools in the US. It ensures that open heart surgery doesn't result in lifelong indebtedness. The people of Pakistan, Haiti, Niger, Vanatu, Ethiopia, the Gambia have nothing to offer Cuba. But Cuba still sends them doctors anyway. If the only goal of the medical missions was to generate profit for Cuba through slavery, it wouldn't deploy doctors to rural Pakistan. If the United States genuinely cared about Cuban welfare, there is one place it
would obviously start, the blockade. Every year, the United Nations votes to end the US blockade on Cuba. Historically, only two countries vote to keep it. The United States and Israel. Now, the United States is blocking all oil from entering Cuba, denying its entire population energy since January of 2026. Cubans, especially infants and the elderly, are now in extreme danger. Denied basic necessities during power cuts caused by the American oil blockade. I tore the pediatric hospital. You know what the nurses and doctors there told me? They said when the power goes out, they immediately turn on their phone lights and race to the babies on
ventilators. Let me ask you this. Because there's a gap between the Hold on. I understand. We're killing babies with There's a gap between when the power goes out and when the generator kicks in. That can be up to like five or six, seven minutes. A baby can die in that time on a ventilator. So, they have to take their phone, turn the light on, race, and hand pump the ventilator because all because the United States has decided that Mexico can't sell oil and fuel. Let me ask Cuba. We already know the effects that this will have. During Trump's first term, he launched maximum
pressure on Cuba and tightened sanctions to the worst that they had ever been. This and the Biden administration's maintenance of it drove a 148% rise in Cuba's infant mortality rate. 1,800 Cuban babies died unnecessarily. A war on doctors, a war on babies by the world's largest weapons dealer. As Trump and Rubio demand countries expel their Cuban medical workers for many of their patients, this withdrawal is a death sentence. In the world dominated by the United States, healthcare is a product. You buy it. Medical students take on crushing debt to become doctors. Hospitals are
run for profit. If treating you isn't profitable, you don't get treated. Millions of families live in crushing medical debt. Many simply never see a doctor. The supply of doctors is deliberately kept scarce to raise prices. The World Economic Forum projects that the world will be short 10 million healthare workers by 2030. In the Cuban worldview, healthcare is a right. You flood the country with doctors training the children of farmers and factory workers for free. Then you send them to places the market would never bother to serve because the people there deserve
healthcare anyway. Since 1960, Cuba has vaccinated tens of millions of children, operated on millions of patients, delivered millions of babies in mountain villages in Guatemala, in earthquake rubble in Pakistan, in Ebola ravaged Sierra Leon. It has offered the world not its leftovers but everything it has. Now it is alone, abandoned and being strangled by the largest military on earth. Cuba's fate like that of so many nations is shaped in distant capitals by powerful people most of us barely understand. We may feel we know the loud personality of Donald Trump, but the other most
powerful man in the world is a mystery. Xiinping controls the world's second largest economy, 2 million active military personnel, and a massive nuclear arsenal. He's reshaping global trade, challenging US dominance across Asia, and making decisions that will affect billions of people for decades. And most people couldn't tell you a single thing about him. That's exactly what Poly Matter series, A Grand Theory of Xihinping, sets out to fix. It's a three-part deep dive into the China she grew up in, the China he inherited, and the China he is now building. It traces
how a man shaped by famine, revolution, and exile became the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, and leaves you understanding not just what she is doing, but why, and what will come next. You can only watch this series on Nebula, an independent streaming platform owned by the creators on it, people like me. Nebula has no ads, no algorithm-driven content, just a viewer-funded space where ambitious projects exist because people actually want them. If you've watched this far into a video on Cuban medical exports, then Nebula was built for you. Nebula hosts series like
a grand theory of alongside countless originals from creators like Neo, Real Engineering, and Wendover Productions covering history, science, and geopolitics with depth, care, and style. My videos are there ad free early and alongside over 200 of your favorite creators and a growing library of highquality exclusives. If you want to watch some of the best independent content online and support this channel, go to go.nebula.tv/cogito or scan the QR code on screen to get 50% off. That's just $30 a year or $2.50 a month. So, go ahead and sign up now to support
independent creators, help make more videos like this possible, and enjoy a ton of original videos.
