Today@Dal

From Time magazine:

As the first nation to dedicate hundreds of health care workers to West Africa, Cuba is an unlikely hero in the Ebola outbreak.

In spite of not being among the wealthiest countries, Cuba is one of the most committed when it comes to deploying doctors to crisis zones. It has offered more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa, and currently, 165 are working there under the direction of the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 50,000 health care workers from Cuba are working in 66 countries around the world.

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Others argue that Cuba’s deep reverence for solidarity among the marginalized is the real motivator and that working in countries that don’t provide adequate care to their own citizens is a political statement. Besides payment, Cuba also gains international goodwill and cooperation between countries. “The very fact that Cuba is the only other nation than the United States to contribute human resources to the Ebola crisis in a big way creates enormous international political capital, especially when most nations are unwilling to send their own people into the center of the calamity,” says Robert Huish, an assistant professor of international development studies at Dalhousie University in Canada.

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