Cuba

 As an example of South-South capacity building at a bilateral level: Cuba offers training of health personnel to other developing countries, for example through its Latin American School of Medicine, which produces more than 2000 graduate doctors every year for Latin America and the Caribbean; and its brigades of health professionals to fill resource gaps in poorer countries.

Special programs to recruit health professionals from abroad, have been created in Portugal, who sees them as “an important answer to overcome the lack of doctors and nurses,” and filling urgent needs in the health system. The supply of qualified doctors in some Latin America countries has led to bilateral and multilateral agreements between the Portuguese government, sending countries (including Uruguay, Cuba, Colombia and Costa Rica), and health institutions.

The Republic of Cuba is the largest island of the grouping of the Caribbean, situated west of Hispaniola island (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and 145 km south of Key West, Florida (US). It has a population of 11 240 000 inhabitants. The HDI for Cuba is high, at 0.863, which means that Cuba ranks 51st out of 182 countries with data.