Tiny Cuba, which has just 11 million residents, has sent the largest medical team of any nation to West Africa to join in the fight against Ebola, according to the World Health Organization.
On Thursday, 165 health professionals traveled to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to join in the fight,
according to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The WHO says the Cuban team is the largest sent by any nation,
reports The Washington Post.
In addition to the first team, another 296 Cuban medical professionals is receiving training in dealing with Ebola and will travel to Liberia and Guinea to join in the aid efforts.
"Money and materials are important, but those two things alone cannot stop Ebola virus transmission," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, said last month. "Human resources are clearly our most important need."
Cuba has a history of sending health workers to deal with global disasters, despite its poverty-level economy, The Post reports. In 2011, the country's Gross Domestic Product was just $68 billion, but thousands of medical professionals are trained there yearly.
The Communist country has had universal health-care since shortly after its revolution, guaranteeing free health care in its constitution. As a result,
the WHO reported in 2008, after the country's residents had 30 years of free health care, Cuba enjoys indicators "close to or equal to those in developed countries."
Cubans have a high life expectancy of 77 years and low numbers in deaths of children under the age of five, the WHO reports.
The country has built its healthcare success, though, on the sheer numbers of professionals who are trained there.
After the revolution, half of its then-6,000 doctors left the country. Under Fidel Castro, the country rebuilt its workforce, including training citizens and foreigners as health care professionals. By 2008, Cuba's schools were
training some 20,000 foreigners per year, for nearly free of charge, as doctors, nurses and dentists.
Even as soon as 1960, Cuba was sending health workers out to deal with global disasters, sending doctors to Chile to deal with the aftermath of an earthquake.
In 2005, Cuba offered to send in medical workers to aid after Hurricane Katrina, an
offer that was refused.
According to Reuters, Cuba now has approximately 50,000 health workers in 66 countries around the world. But the medical service isn't always for purely humanitarian reasons. About 30,000 of the workers are in Venezuela, for example, serving as a "partial payment" for oil sales.
Critics, though, say Cuba is sacrificing its own citizens' health by sending so many workers to other countries. In addition,
reports the Los Angeles Times, many of the medical workers sent to Venezuela are fleeing the country in hopes of coming to the United States and to get away from heavy workloads in that country.