Cuban doctors arrive in SA to assist in fight against COVID-19

Cuban doctors arrive in SA to assist in fight against COVID-19

Mon, 04/27/2020 - 09:20
2 comments
Image
Cuban doctors arriving in South Africa for CCP Virus assistance

South Africa does not have enough funding to provide medical supplies like disinfectants and masks to all essential staff, but the funding is there to fly in medical staff from the other side of the globe.

South African Airways, who flew to Cuba to pick up the specialists, is bankrupt and fails to pay all staff during the lockdown resulting from the CCP Virus. But there is enough funding for such a joyride, though.

With all due respect to the medical professionals of Cuba, South Africa has enough qualified medical staff to deal with the crisis. In case the South African government disagrees, it only shows their lack of competence in running a country and its education system. As a reminder, on 3 December 1967 South African cardiac surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first highly publicized heart transplant, and the first one in which the patient regained consciousness. Half a century later, the country supposedly needs outside help.

And the farce continues...

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/28/2020 - 08:03

I think some think this is a humanitarian mission by the Cuban doctors. No, it’s not. Our own Gift of the Givers does a lot of humanitarian missions across the world. This is a business transaction. It’s a tender. Here is the thing:

1. The Cuban deployment comes with a price tag of approximately 250 million South African Rands. This is over and above the chartered SAA flight, 14 days quarantine at a hotel and accommodation for the duration of 12 months. 

2. The problem with the history of tenders is that we tend to get more of what we don’t need at higher costs. This deployment consists of various specialists including epidemiologists and Biostatisticians. How many of these do we require for the same pandemic? We already have our own Prof Karim and many others. 

3. COVID-19 mostly requires large numbers of hospital beds in the form of makeshift hospitals and mostly medical officers and nurses. What are these other specialists? Less than 5% of COVID-19 cases require specialist care in ICU. We can’t increase the number of specialist without increasing ICU capacity. Less than 20% COVID-19 patients will require admission. Most of these will only require general medical supportive measures including oxygen and IV medications. 

4. South Africa has approximately 38 000 doctors, of these about 12 000 are specialists and the rest are general practitioners. Have we exhausted this capacity before acquiring the services of 180 foreign doctors who can hardly speak English. Our Spanish in the rural areas isn’t that good either. 

5. At a cost of R250 million, that’s above R1 million per Cuban doctor over 12 months. A proportion of this goes directly to the Cuban government. Our very own Medical Officers would cost half of this. 

6. Cuba has conducted 1349 tests compared to our 4600 tests. Their mortality rate is 5 per million population compared to our 1 per million population. Their total cases are 121 per million population compared to our 77 per million population. We have done 2843 tests per million population and they have done 3516 tests per million population. Basically our performance is the almost at the same level. 

Looking at the above I struggle to see the justification to give the tender to Cuba when all we could do would’ve been to employ local Medical Officers on a monthly contract basis till the pandemic is over.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/28/2020 - 10:58

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

The reason for our importation of unneeded Cuban doctors is a mixture of Cuban strategy and our governments desire to demonstrate solidarity with a socialist ally.  Cuba has long had a practice of exporting doctors and has until recently had approximately 50,000 doctors working abroad.  Cuba typically charges about $55,000 pa per doctor and pays only 25% of the charge to the doctor (host countries cover living costs). As a result “doctor leasing” makes up 46% of Cuban exports and 6% of GDP.   The Cuban doctors are not here out of human solidarity.