By Yaimy Ravelo on March 21, 2020
A new brigade of Cuban doctors departed on Saturday afternoon to Italy, one of the most affected countries by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This squad of health care professionals is joining those teams who recently arrived in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Suriname, Grenada, and Jamaica with the same purpose.
52 highly specialized doctors and nurses will arrive in the Lombardy region, which is particularly hard hit, to collaborate in slowing the new coronavirus at the request of Italian authorities in the face of a shortage of staff in hospitals and the crisis in the public health system of the region.
The Cuban doctors will be joining Chinese doctors who are already working in Milan and they will be sent to a new field hospital to be built in Bergamo, the province most affected by coronavirus.
As the doctors were preparing to depart from the Jose Marti Airport in Havana a reporter asked one of the doctors if he was afraid and his response was, “He who says he is not afraid is a superhero, but we are not superheroes, we are revolutionary doctors.”
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, in Cuba, translation North America bureau