Tiny Andorra gets 39 Cubans to battle coronavirus

France24 ^ | March 30, 2020

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Andorra la Vella (Andorra) (AFP) - Thirty-nine Cuban doctors and nurses arrived on Monday in the tiny Pyrenean principality of Andorra to help it battle the coronavirus, the Andorran health ministry said, part of an international drive by Havana that has sparked controversy.

Andorra is now the second European state after Italy to have received help from Cuba, whose export of medical services has long been one of the motors of its socialist economy.

Andorra has asked for the help from 12 doctors and 27 nurses from Cuba to relieve its own medical staff, 60 of whom have had to stop work for fear they might have caught the virus, its Health Minister Joan Martinez Benazet told AFP.

The microstate of just 77,000 people, wedged between France and Spain and best known as a ski resort, has been hit hard by the virus, which has killed seven and left 11 in intensive care.

Communist Cuba has so far sent medical teams to Italy, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Grenada, Suriname, Jamaica and Belize to battle the coronavirus.

But the US State Department has condemned the assistance, saying Cuba "keeps most of the salary its doctors and nurses earn while serving in its international medical missions while exposing them to egregious labor conditions."

Havana has dismissed such comments as a campaign of lies to discredit the doctors it has sent around the world.

[Verginius Rufus]

The whole northern coastal region of Spain was never conquered by the Muslims. In the late 8th century Charlemagne began to process of reconquest, adding the extreme northeastern part of Spain to his empire, but that area had been under Muslim rule for some decades.

[hecticskeptic]

Beautiful place... stayed there for a few days in the ‘70s when I was hitchhiking from Paris to Barcelona. Good skiing at a very reasonable price but the thing I remember was the duty free status... bought lots of neat stuff at reasonable prices.