Sicily asks Cuba to send medics as Italy fights second Covid wave

[Judi Lynn]

Request made to embassy in Cuba as island struggles with shortage of doctors and nurses

Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo
@lorenzo_tondo
Wed 25 Nov 2020 13.13 EST

Authorities in Sicily have asked Cuba’s government to send about 60 healthcare workers, including doctors and nurses, to the region as hospitals in the Italian island struggle with a shortage of medical personnel during the second coronavirus wave.

The request was filed this week to the Italian embassy in Cuba and refers to intensive care specialists, nurses, anaesthetists, resuscitators, virologists and pneumologists, the Italian newspaper la Repubblica reported.

Between March and April this year, Cuban medical teams landed in some of Italy’s worst-hit regions, including Lombardy and Piedmont, to replace overworked Italian professionals.

Other medical brigades have fanned out across the world to fight Covid-19 in 20 other countries, from South Africa to Suriname.

“The Cuban government has teams of doctors and nurses who are willing to travel to other countries to work, and we asked for their help’’, Renato Costa, Sicily’s Covid-19 emergency commissioner, told la Repubblica. “We know that in recent weeks other regions in Italy have asked Cuba for help, too. We just hope they will come to us first. I am in contact with the embassy, which has welcomed our request.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/25/sicily-asks-cuba-to-send-medics-as-italy-fights-second-covid-wave