Katrina aid from Cuba? No thanks, says U.S.

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They remain on stand-by, their bags packed. And while they wait at a Havana medical school that normally houses international scholarship students, the brigade has been brushing up on English skills, the epidemiology common to natural disasters, and the local history of Louisiana and Mississippi.

A colleague of Dr. Suchay, Dr. Delvis Marta Fernandez, 32, is frustrated that she and the other doctors find themselves lingering in Havana.

“Let’s get going,” she said. “This is not political. This is a humanitarian emergency. People are dying and they need our help.”

That’s something she knows about, despite her young age.

After graduating medical school shortly after her 22^nd birthday, Fernandez spent two years in an isolated mountain community. “I once had to walk some 10 miles for an ambulance,” she said.

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From there, she volunteered to work in Haiti where she “practiced medicine by candlelight” for two more years.

And when Hurricane Jeanne killed 600 people in Haiti last September, Fernandez sacrificed her vacation at the beach to return to the flooded island.

“I do this for the children,” she said, expecting that she would be in the U.S. for about three months.

Disaster zone experience
Young, smart, committed and impatient to “get going” are ways to describe this Cuban medical brigade; they also know how to tackle disaster zones — since 1995, more than a dozen hurricanes have hit Cuba.

Still, the Administration has yet to give the Cuban government a flat yes or no. In fact, Havana never may get an answer.

For more than four decades, the two governments have barely communicated. Current relations, say observers, are at a low point.

This irritates Representative José Serrano (D-NY).

“If you have a flood in your home and a neighbor that you don’t like offers you a pump, you don’t turn them down and let your house continue being flooded,” said Serrano.

Last Tuesday, Serrano and a colleague from Arizona, Raúl Grijalva, sent a letter to the Secretary of State urging the Administration to accept the Cuban assistance.

”These doctors could help people. That’s the bottom line,” argued Serrano. “The decision to help people should not have any political calculations attached… The tragedy is that people’s lives are at stake and they cannot seem to just accept the help.”

Mary Murray is an NBC News producer based in Havana, Cuba.

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