In a strong statement, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, highlighted the importance of Cuban medical collaboration during the Covid-19 pandemic, stressing that the country would not have been able to overcome the health crisis without the help of doctors and nurses from Cuba. teleSUR
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00:00In Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Amor-Motley addressed the issue of the United States'
00:05threats on countries that receive Cuban medical brigades in their territories, while highlighting
00:10the labour of Cuban medical personnel.
00:13The matter with the Cubans and the nurses should tell us everything that we need to
00:21know.
00:22Barbados does not currently have Cuban medical staff or Cuban nurses, but I will be the first
00:28to go to the line and to tell you that we could not get through the pandemic without
00:33the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors.
00:40I will also be the first to tell you that we paid them the same thing that we pay Bajans,
00:46and that the notion, as was peddled not just by this government in the U.S., but the previous
00:51government, that we were involved in Cuban trafficking by engaging with the Cuban nurses
00:56was fully repudiated and rejected by us.
00:59Now, I don't believe that we have to shout across the seas, but I am prepared, like others
01:05in this region, that if we cannot reach a sensible agreement on this matter, then if
01:11the cost of it is the loss of my visa to the U.S., then so be it.
01:16But what matters to us is principles, and I have said over and over that principles
01:25only mean something when it is inconvenient to stand by it.
01:30Now, we don't have to shout, but we can be resolute, and I therefore look forward to
01:36standing with my CARICOM brothers—I wish I could say brothers and sisters, but brothers—to
01:45be able to ensure that we explain that what the Cubans have been able to do for us, far
01:53from approximating itself to human trafficking, has been to save lives and limbs and sight
02:00for many a Caribbean person.