Cuba gives salary incentives to doctors to retain them in hospitals

Alexey López, a 59-year-old cardiologist who works at a major hospital in Havanasleeps “a little more peacefully” since he received the salary incentives granted by the government to try to retain the health workers.

This specialist, who cares for intensive care patients, is one of more than 400,000 doctors, nurses and technicians who began to benefit from these income increases from the beginning of 2024.

The benefits are for night and weekend shifts, as well as for seniority, for working in specialized or risk services and for assuming greater workloads due to lack of personnel.

This “Above all, it helps us sleep a little more peacefully, which was what we had lost, sleep, calculating what to buy.” to be able to face the high cost of daily life, López tells AFP, in the intensive care room of the Calixto García hospital, one of the most prestigious on the island.

This cardiologist’s monthly income went from 6,500 Cuban pesos to 17,000, equivalent to US$54 and US$141 respectively, according to the official quote. But they are US$21 and US$56 if we take into account the value of the currency on the black market, which marks the prices on the streets of Cuba.

The Vice Minister of Health, Luis Fernando Navarro, explained to AFP that this measure aims to “the comprehensive improvement of the living conditions of workers”.

Cost of living

However, for Amanda, a 48-year-old physical therapist who requested anonymity, the 1,400 pesos she received are insufficient on the 4,000 she earned monthly, and she says that she will have “to look for other options that generate income” to survive.

In the midst of an inflationary escalation since 2021, when the government applied a monetary reform that did not have the expected results, a package of eggs can cost up to 3,000 Cuban pesos, as an example.

The Vice Minister of Health admits that “perhaps this increase is not what the current cost of living in Cuba” for the “permanent” increase in prices, but emphasizes that the government has made an effort to allocate 26% of the money to health public spending in 2024.

Health is the second largest labor sector in Cuba after teaching, also benefiting from salary increases.

Between 2022 and 2023 more than 40,000 health workers They left the profession to take other better-paid jobs or emigrated, in the midst of the exodus affecting the island, according to figures from the Ministry of Health.

With these stimuli, the authorities gave a break to doctors and teachers, both “pillars” of the revolution, before implementing a battery of painful economic measures announced for 2024, among which is the 500% increase in the price of fuel.

Prevention continues to be the main asset of the universal and free Cuban health system, with 89 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants, and a wide network of clinics and offices per neighborhood.

According to the World Health Organization, in 2021 France had 33 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants and the United States 35.

The vice minister recognizes that there are doctors “to ensure that 100%” of the neighborhood clinics work, but “not so in secondary care“in specialty hospitals”and tertiary care” in centers for complex and high-tech pathologies.

The intensification of the embargo USA against the island, the internal structural weaknesses of the Cuban economy, financing limitations and the increase in the cost of inputs in the international market “have caused the (health) system to work under conditions of great tension“, Add.

Who else?

Between old cardiology monitors and inadequate beds for seriously ill patients, López regrets the lesser presence of doctors and nurses.

“He economic impact of the country today we have suffered it in medical equipment, supplies, expendable (disposable) material and medicines”, adds the cardiologist.

Sometimes doctors have to buy their own stethoscopes and other work tools. In this intensive care area there is a lack of nasogastric and bladder tubes, syringes and disposable supplies that do not exist in the country.

López denies that hepassed through the head” emigrate, but assures that he would like these stimuli to be applied directly to the staff salary doctor to avoid losing them in retirement or when taking vacation.

“I know many colleagues who have left and today these measures still do not encourage them to return.”, he says before checking a patient.

“If they don’t deserve it, who is going to deserve it? They are the best!”, says Francisco Morín, 75 years old, with electrodes attached to his chest.