Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuban foreign minister, condemned on Wednesday the U.S. campaign to discredit Cuban health collaboration and its use as a pretext to tighten the blockade against the Caribbean nation.

These moves are aimed at distracting attention, with an electoral objective, of the malfunctioning of the US to deal with the pandemic, the Cuban diplomat said.

For months, the US government has unleashed a defamatory campaign against Cuban health professionals, which had among its most significant moments the removal of the Cuban medical mission from Brazil in the face of the difficult conditions that president Jair Bolsonaro tried to impose, and which led to the breaking-up of the More Doctors program, fostered by Dilma Rousseff.
Representatives of the U.S. government have also pointed out that the health professionals working in Venezuela, as part of the Barrio Adentro mission, are Cuban military agents, of which they have not presented any evidence and pretend not to know the impact of this initiative on raising the quality of life of that South American people.

In spite of this, many governments are asking for the help of the Caribbean nation to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the period of confrontation with the global health crisis, the Trump administration tightened its almost 60-year-old blockade with strong limitations on family remittances, restrictions on people-to-people contact and increasing harassment of foreign companies doing business in Cuba.