Cuba reinstates controls on doctors travelling abroad
[BBC] – Cuba has reinstated restrictions on doctors leaving the island to work in the United States and other countries.
Doctors will now have to apply for a special permit before going abroad.
Cuba’s health services have been “seriously affected” by the large number of doctors who have moved abroad since controls were eased in 2013, the authorities said.
Cuba also criticised a US policy it said encouraged doctors and other health workers to leave their posts.
Under the 2006 Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, Cuban medical personnel sent by Cuba’s government to study or work in a third country are allowed to enter the US.
Cuba said the programme was an attempt by the US to drain it of medical professionals.
“It must be recalled that the United States government has historically used its migratory policy as a weapon against the Revolution, and has, for political reasons, encouraged emigration from Cuba,” says a government statement published in the official newspaper, Granma.
The US and communist Cuba restored relations earlier this year after more than 50 years of hostilities, but the US trade embargo remains in place.
A huge number of qualified health professionals have left Cuba over the past two years.
Most of them try to reach the United States, which has a special immigration policy for Cuban citizens, known as “wet-foot, dry-foot”.
It allows Cubans who reach the US by land to apply for residency while those who are intercepted at sea are turned back.
The policy has led to a rise in Cubans trying to make their way to the US through Latin America by land.
Some 3,000 Cubans migrants are currently stranded on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, after the latter closed its border.
Nicaragua, which has close ties with the Cuban government, has refused to let the migrants travel north through its country,
Cuba said it was trying to find a solution to the problem by maintaining “contact with the countries involved in the search for a rapid, adequate solution”.
St Ann man charged with 6-y-o boy’s murder
[Jamaica Observer] – Detectives assigned to the St Ann’s Bay Criminal Investigation Branch yesterday charged 24-year-old Vinel Brown of Mount Edgecombe district in Runnaway Bay, St Ann for the murder of six-year-old Daniel Anderson.
He was reported missing to the police a day before his mutilated body was found in a gully in Mount Edgecombe district on Monday, November 16.
Brown, who faced an identification parade on Monday is to appear before the St Ann’s Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
Investigations continue.
Trinidad sets up ISIS Hotline
[TT Guardian] – A hotline telephone number has been set up to allow people to share information they may have on T&T nationals who may be heading to join international terrorist group ISIS.
The information, which can be given with anonymity, will be gathered and passed on to the relevant authorities, including officials of the Ministry of National Security.
The hotline has been set up by Muslim activist Inshan Ishmael, even as word is coming that three more Trini nationals are preparing to head to Syria to join ISIS fighters.
Speaking with the T&T Guardian yesterday, Ishmael confirmed the increasing number of people leaving to join ISIS and urged those who may have information to call the hotline: 645-6397.
“If anyone knows anything and any such person, please call. Many people are selling out all their assets and even taking their children out of school so that they can leave to join ISIS but what they don’t realise is that they are walking into an inferno,” Ishmael said.
The T&T Guardian has received vital information that three men in their late 20s from the Maloney area will be leaving on Friday for the United States and from there will fly through Europe and on to Syria, where they will be met with ISIS recruiting officials.
Deyalsingh: Have one sex partner
[Trinidad Express] – “Have one sex partner,” Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh appealed to the population to adopt this mantra yesterday, which was World AIDS Day 2015.
The minister also wrote the pledge during his afternoon visit to the health fair and exhibition on the Brian Lara Promenade, Port of Spain, where he said one of the success stories in Trinidad and Tobago was the “mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission rate, which had dropped to two per cent”.
In the morning, Minister of Social Development and Family Services Cherrie Ann Crichlow-Cockburn delivered the feature address and declared the exhibition open. The health fair was set up in conjunction with the Ministry of the People and Family Services HIV/AIDS Coordinating Unit.
The theme was “Getting To Zero: Zero New HIV Infections, Zero Discrimination and Zero AIDS Related Deaths”.
The health fair featured an HIV/AIDS exhibition which was complemented by the distribution of literature on HIV/AIDS and condoms for both men and women.
HIV-positive children from the Cyril Ross Home in Tacarigua also displayed their Christmas-themed craft as part of T&T’s show of solidarity in marking World AIDS Day.
