HAVANA: Cuba’s foreign minister accused the United States of “extorting” Latin American countries by pressuring them to cancel decades-old deals with Havana for the supply of doctors.
Bruno Rodriguez said the United States was trying to “strangle” the economy of the communist island, which earns billions from its foreign medical missions, after several countries stopped deploying Cuban doctors.
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Washington says the programme—a major source of pride, and income, in Cuba since the 1960s—amounts to forced labour.
The US stance on the doctors’ program is part of a campaign of maximum pressure on the Cuban regime by Trump.
Trump has made threats about “taking” the island after ousting Venezuela’s leader and attacking Iran.
Countries seeking to maintain strong ties to Washington have started to yield to pressure to pull out of the medical partnerships.
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Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, and Guyana have all terminated their agreements with Cuba, which is teetering on the edge of economic collapse, partly due to a US energy blockade.
“The US government is persecuting, pressuring, and extorting other governments to end the presence of Cuban Medical Brigades in various countries, under false pretenses,” Rodriguez said on X.
According to official figures, some 24,000 Cuban doctors and other healthcare professionals were deployed in 56 countries in 2025.
Most are sent to remote areas.
Half were deployed to Venezuela, Cuba’s top ally for a quarter of a century before the January ouster of socialist president Nicolas Maduro by US forces.
The program was projected to generate $7 billion in earnings for the cash-strapped island last year.
On Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published a report denouncing serious human rights violations in the missions.
The report accused Cuba of withholding doctors’ wages, confiscating passports and threatening medics with up to eight years in prison if they defected from their jobs abroad.
In an interview with AFP, IACHR president Edgar Stuardo Ralon said some of the practices could be classified as “forced labor” and “human trafficking.”
According to official Cuban statistics cited in the report, the doctors receive only between 2.5 percent and 25 percent of what countries pay Cuba for their services.
Cuba has defended the program as a measure of “solidarity” with other countries, designed to bring health services to “hard-to-reach places.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov hailed the “special nature” of relations with Cuba on a visit Thursday, where he met President Miguel Diaz-Canel as tensions simmer between Washington and energy-starved Havana.
“Russia is not going to leave the western hemisphere, no matter what they say in Washington,” Ryabkov told a press conference after the meeting, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
“Our relations with Cuba are of a special nature... We can’t just betray Cuba, it’s completely out of the question, we can’t leave it to its fate.”
The meeting, confirmed by Diaz-Canel’s office on X, came 10 days after a Russian oil tanker arrived in Cuba despite a de facto US fuel blockade.
“We take this opportunity to send a hug to our dear friend, President Vladimir Putin,” Diaz-Canel said in the meeting, according to his office.
Ryabkov said Cuba’s economic issues, including its energy security, were among the main topics of discussion, TASS reported.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, has demanded changes to the island’s leadership.
Earlier on Thursday, Diaz-Canel told US-based NBC News that he would not resign under US pressure.
Rubio has denied calling for Diaz-Canel’s resignation.
“At the present moment, Russia is one hundred percent in solidarity with Cuba; despite the complexity the country is going through, we are by your side, said the deputy foreign minister,” the Cuban president’s office wrote on X on Thursday.
