Twenty of the 217 Cuban doctors who arrived in South Africa in April to assist in combating the Covid-19 pandemic are to be dispatched to Port Elizabeth and East London. These cities have recorded well over 700 cases between them.
Health minister Zweli Mkhize announced this at a press conference in East London on Monday.
He was in the province to inspect its work on the pandemic.
The doctors were currently in quarantine and were undergoing language training. ‘Their medical programme in Cuba is conducted in Spanish, so we have made an intervention by introducing English classes,’ the minister said.
He warned against negativity towards the doctors, saying that they had skills that South Africa needed. ‘the Cuban specialists understand the approach to community and family health where you need to look at not just one person but the people in their surroundings so that we can manage the disease as it affects the entire community.’
The importation of the contingent of Cuban doctors has been a point of controversy, with questions raised about the price tag (documents that have neither been confirmed nor denied by government suggest close to half a billion rand), and the apparently preferential consideration they are receiving in being registered. Many medical personnel in South Africa are unregistered or unemployed. In a podcast on the Daily Maverick, journalist Rebecca Davis posed the question whether this programme was ultimately intended to benefit South Africans or the Cuban state.