New US sanctions announced on Thursday targeted Cuba’s decades-old international medical missions programme, which sends doctors to dozens of countries and earns the island billions in revenue.
The sanctions targeted government enterprises associated with the programme as well as Cuban Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda.
The move is the latestthe US government under President Donald Trumpment to tighten a stranglehold on the communist-run island in recent months.
Washington has also imposed a blockade on vital fuel and other supplies, with Trump threatening to ‘take over’ the island after ousting Venezuela’s leader in January.
In a statement on Thursday, the State Department said that Cuba’s overseas medical missions programme amounted to ‘forced labour' and ‘human trafficking’.
“Cuban officials exploit inherently coercive laws and economic conditions to manipulate or compel workers to join and remain in labour export programmes, while confiscating between 50 and 95 per cent of the wages paid by receiving countries,” the statement said.
According to official figures, around 24,000 Cuban doctors and other healthcare professionals were deployed in 56 countries in 2025.
Most are sent to remote areas, with Havana touting the programme as offering aid to less developed countries in the Global South.
Half were deployed to Venezuela, Cuba’s top ally for a quarter of a century before the violent January ouster of socialist president Nicolás Maduro by US forces.
The programme was projected to generate $7 billion in earnings for the cash-strapped island last year.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez defended the medical missions, calling them ‘a humane and fraternal service’.
Rodriguez wrote Thursday on X that the attack against Cuba’s medical cooperation is an aggression against the human right of hundreds of thousands of people in many parts of the world to access health services.
According to official Cuban statistics cited in an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report, doctors enrolled in Cuba’s programme receive between 2.5 per cent and 25 per cent of what countries pay Havana for their services.
The Trump administration had already exerted pressure on the programme earlier this year, with Cuba’s foreign minister accusing Washington of ‘extorting’ several Latin American countries that cancelled their medical assistance deals with Havana.
