The non-profit organization Solidarity Without Borders (SSF) has launched the second phase of a program to directly assist Cuban health professionals participating on the island in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If you are a doctor, nurse or health technician who is working in Cuba at the moment, let us know how we can help you. Supplements, medicines, or any other resource that you need at this time of crisis, let us know through the form below. Solidaridad Sin Fronteras is doing everything possible to provide you with the support you so badly need. All this information will be kept confidential “, reads the heading that appears in the organization’s website founded in Miami in 2004.
“As of this Monday, August 21, we will be establishing humanitarian assistance operations directly to doctors within the island,” Julio César Alfonso, president of Solidaridad sin Fronteras, a non-governmental organization that promotes the labor reintegration of immigrant health professionals into the US medical system, which this Monday reached its 17th anniversary.
The contact is confidential and those interested can enter the following link: https://www.ssfhelp.org/copia-de-help-cuba-1?lang=es.
This is the second phase of the program that began on July 12 last, and that sought that companies and interested parties in general, through the Solidaridad Sin Fronteras website, inform of the producers who would be willing to donate. Now, it is extended to doctors within Cuba.
“In this way, the doctors enter the Solidaridad Sin Fronteras portal and report their needs. We contact the donors who deliver the products to us and then we take care of the course ”, he explained.
Dr. Alfonso preferred not to offer details on how this aid will be delivered to Cuban doctors.
“For obvious reasons we do not want to give information about the ways we have to send the aid. We are working with a network of companies and private donors who are the providers of the supplies. At the same time, prior coordination with agencies and other companies in the US will allow shipments to reach their destination ”, he specified.
The doctor also recalled that, as part of the same campaign, a group of more than 8,000 Cuban health professionals residing in the US grouped around Solidaridad Sin Fronteras expressed their willingness to provide their services on a voluntary basis on the island.
“We have not channeled this provision through the island government because we know the answer, but we have made it known to international organizations linked to the World Health Organization, without so far we have obtained a response,” he said.
Groups of Cubans living overseas have organized shipments of medicines and supplies to the island amid the health chaos due to the increase in cases of COVID-19, but traditionally the government of Cuba does not accept the sending or distribution of donations outside the channels officers.
Last summer, the regime held back for several weeks and finally confiscated more than 20 tons of humanitarian aid collected by exiles in Miami that would have benefited some 15,000 Cuban families.
In December, Reverend Mardoqueo Jiménez, from the Hispania Bible Church in the US, sender of the cargo, denounced that the aid “has been stolen” by the Cuban government.
The Cibercuba portal reported last week that the US government granted a license to two small cargo airlines in the state of Florida to carry out about 10 weekly chartered flights to Cuba with emergency humanitarian aid until the end of the year. The airlines Skyway Enterprises and IBC Airways received authorization to transport medicines, hygiene products and sanitary supplies to eight airports in Havana and the interior of the country.
Dr. Alfonso declined to comment on whether Solidaridad Sin Fronteras will use these flights to deliver the planned aid.
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