"Cuba's Medical Team in the European Epicenter of COVID-19: Carlos R. Pérez-Díaz MD MS PhD Director, Joaquín Albarrán Provincial Clinical-Surgical Hospital, Havana Henry Reeve Medical Contingent Leader, Lombardy, Italy".

Abstract

On March 23, 2020, Cuba's Henry Reeve Emergency Medical Contingent began treating COVID-19 patients at Maggiore Hospital in Crema, Lombardy. Within days, the 52-member contingent comprised of 36 doctors and 15 nurses (plus 1 logistics specialist), together with Italian colleagues, were receiving patients in an adjacent fi eld hospital established and equipped for this purpose. At the time, Lombardy was the epicenter of COVID-19 transmission in Europe. Many of the Cubans in Lombardy were Contingent veterans, having served in postdisaster and epidemic scenarios in Chile, Pakistan, Haiti and elsewhere since the founding of the emergency medical team in 2005. Importantly, some had worked fi ghting the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Even so, providing medical care during COVID-19 is a unique challenge, the likes of which had never before been seen by the Cuban team. Dr Carlos R. Pérez-Díaz, one of the Contingent's founding members, headed the team during its 60-day rotation in Lombardy, drawing on a wide array of professional experience. From 2006 to 2009, Dr Pérez-Díaz led the Cuban team posted at the Peltier Hospital in Djibouti, where he worked in the infectious disease department; in 2008, this team helped control a cholera outbreak that had spread to three countries. Following the 2010 earthquake in Chile, Dr Pérez-Díaz headed the team of Henry Reeve volunteers that provided free health services for 10 months in a tent hospital established to treat victims; he returned to Chile in 2015, again as head of the Henry Reeve Contingent, after severe fl ooding struck the Atacama region.