Washington DC - The Trump administration on Thursday announced new sanctions targeting Cuba's decades-old international medical missions program, which sends highly-qualified doctors to dozens of countries.
The latest US sanctions target government enterprises associated with Cuba's overseas health program as well as Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda.
It's the latest move by Trump's government to tighten a catastrophic stranglehold on the island nation, which has already led to a worsening humanitarian crisis.
In a statement on Thursday, the State Department said, without evidence, that Cuba's overseas medical missions program amounted to "forced labor" and "human trafficking."
"Cuban officials exploit inherently coercive laws and economic conditions to manipulate or compel workers to join and remain in labor export programs, while confiscating between [50–95%] 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, Havana touting the program as offering aid to less developed countries in the Global South. Medical training, research, and aid is one of the country's largest and most successful exports.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez defended the medical missions, calling them "a humane and fraternal service."
"The attack against Cuba's medical cooperation tantamount to an aggression against the human right of hundreds of thousands of persons in many parts of the world to have access to health services," Rodriguez wrote Thursday on X.
"This is being done by the government of the richest country in the world, which is determined to deny such elemental human right to tens of millions of its own citizens."
US sanctions on the medical industry are likely to have an overwhelming impact on countries that rely on Cuba for their medical workforce, leading to potentially deadly shortages of personnel and resources.