Primitive Pacific islanders (Tuvalu) appalled by incompetence of Cuba-trained doctors

Tuvalu strikes me as a charming place, with charming natives –whoops!..Is it OK to use that term (natives) nowadays?

Well, sorry if I offended anyone…at any rate, Tuvalu is a series of Pacific islands (atolls, actually) north of Fiji and is a former British possession formerly known as the Ellice Islands. Despite its charm, Tuvalu is not known as a particularly advanced place scientifically-speaking…and yet the natives recently gasped while witnessing the medical practices of a place even more primitive in its medical practices: Cuba.

Radio Australia has the entire story here:

Cuba’s contribution to medical education in the region has been welcomed by many Pacific countries, but some are finding that doctors who’ve studied in Cuba need extra training when they return home. Tuvalu finds Cuban-trained doctors need skills gap filled.

In Tuvalu, 22 students have been sent to medical school in Cuba since 2008.

But the government is concerned about their level of practical training, as well as difficulties operating in English after studying in Spainish.

So the Education Department is planning to send returning doctors to Kiribati for a special internship as the department’s pre-service training officer Atabi Ewekia explains.

This is where Tuvalu’s Cuba-trained doctors will be sent to de-program them from what they learned in Cuba’s world-renown medical schools:

In brief, the incompetence of Cuba-trained doctors is such that they will be essentially “de-programmed” in a medical school where two generations ago medicine was probably the province of witch-doctors with bones through their noses.