Global Collaboration in Times of COVID-19: Cuba's Emergency Medical Contingent.

Abstract

The days are long and arduous, with end-less patients to attend, often in a foreign language, always on foreign shores. Far from family and the familiar. Sleep is fi tful at best for health profession-als serving in emergency situations-when sickness obeys no clock and patients' pain haunts even the quiet moments. The crisis scenario varies: post-earthquake, hurricane or tsunami; amid a cholera or Ebola epidemic. The countries vary: Haiti, Pakistan, Guatemala, Mozambique, Sierra Leone. What does not vary is the answer to the calls for help and Cuban professionals' commitment to care for the most vulner-able. These aren't armchair musings or a political pat on the back: they are my own conclusions after living for weeks in close-quarter tents with Cuban doctors, nurses and biomedical engineers in post-earth-quake Pakistan and Haiti, and witnessing their work.