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As the world fights to stop COVID-19 claiming more lives, Cuba has dispatched 593 medical workers to 14 countries in their battles against the pandemic, its ministry of public health told Al Jazeera.
One of the first Cuban medical teams was sent to Italy on March 21 at the request of Lombardy, its worst-hit region.
According to Dr Jorge Delgado Bustillo, director of the Central Unit of Cooperation at the ministry, which is responsible for running the foreign missions, the other 13 countries are: Andorra, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Surinam, Jamaica, Haiti, Belice, Dominica, and the island nations of Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, St Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda.
Dozens of other countries across the world have also sent requests for medical help from Cuba, which the health ministry is currently reviewing and will respond to based on its capacities, Dr Bustillo said in an email to Al Jazeera.
"Cuba has extended a hand many times, but never so many times in such a short time. In the past week, a Henry Reeve brigade has departed with each sunrise. There are already 11 in total. There is no precedent," Jose Angel Portal Miranda, Cuba's health minister, tweeted on March 28.
Since then, three more medical missions have been sent. According to a statement on the Cuban health ministry's website, 179 doctors, 399 nurses and 15 health technologists have been dispatched as part of this initiative.
These medical workers belong to the Henry Reeve Emergency Medical Contingent, named after a US-born general who fought in the First Cuban War of Independence in the 19th century.
It was created in 2005 by the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro and specialises in rapid medical response to natural disasters and outbreaks.
They don't have this problem that Boris Johnson has and that Trump has, which is that the public healthcare response interferes with private interest and the process of profit-making.
According to the Pan American Health Organization, between 2005 and 2017, the unit helped 3.5 million people in 21 countries affected by disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and epidemics, including the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
On March 18, a British cruise ship carrying several passengers infected with COVID-19 was allowed to dock at a Cuban port, after it was turned away by other countries in the Caribbean. Some 680 passengers were then flown back to the UK on chartered flights from Havana.
So far, Cuba itself has 170 confirmed cases and four deaths, at least two of whom were foreign tourists. Like many other nations, it has barred foreigners from travelling to the country and advised the elderly and people with underlying conditions to stay at home.
But unlike other countries, it has not imposed a nationwide lockdown.
A history of Cuba's medical internationalism Cuba's international medical outreach goes back decades, to the first years of the Cuban Revolution.
Experts say years of investment in free healthcare and a flourishing biotechnology sector have prepared its workforce to respond to emergencies.
In 1960, a year after Castro took power, Cuba sent a team of medics to Chile after a devastating earthquake hit the country. Three years later, Havana dispatched medical workers to help newly independent Algeria build its healthcare sector.
According to Helen Yaffe, a lecturer in Economic and Social History at University of Glasgow, free healthcare as a universal human right was a key tenet of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and laid the foundations of its medical internationalism - the idea and practice of sending medical teams to support other nations.
Cuba developed its public healthcare system, focusing on primary care and prevention, and built an international outreach programme which Yaffe says was based on solidarity and offered free of charge until the early 2000s.
After Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela, Cuba started sending medical staff and educators to help his Bolivarian revolution.
In return, Havana started purchasing Venezuelan oil at below-market prices. Some 30,000 Cuban medical workers were sent in the first 10 years of the "Oil for Doctors" programme.
"It was when Venezuela said, 'We can pay for this', that the possibility of Cuba using the export of medical professionals as a source of revenue for the country developed," said Yaffe.
Cuba later set up permanent medical missions in a number of countries, including South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, Qatar and others, which would pay in hard currency for them.
Over the past 50 years, it is estimated that between 135,000 and 400,000 Cuban doctors have been sent abroad.