Cuba has strongly defended its Miracle Operation eye care program

There were calls in Jamaica last week for the programme to be suspended, after it was discovered that three people had lost their eyesight and fourteen others ended up with serious corneal damage after operations in Havana.

Jamaica Health expert Dr Albert Lue, citing a survey of sixty Jamaicans who returned from Cuban operations recently, made an impassioned appeal for the government in Kingston to suspend the programme and carry out an assessment to determine whether it met appropriate standards.

Jamaica's Ministry of health says it is considering that appeal which was backed up by the opposition Jamaica Labour Party.

The Cuban defence

But Cuban Ambassador Gisela Garcia Rivera, who is based in Kingston, believes the matter is being blown out of proportion.

This is far above the internationally acceptable standards Ambassador Rivera

She told the Jamaica Gleaner that her country has provided the service to 230 thousand people in Latin America and the Caribbean to date, and complications from these eye operations are less than two percent of the total number of people who have gone to Cuba.

"This is far above the internationally acceptable standards," the ambassador said.

But conceding that the figures would bring no comfort to those affected, Ambassador Rivera said Cuba remained committed to them and would seek to provide further treatment.

Grenadians loving it

The Jamaican concern has caused other Caribbean states to take a closer look at the free eye treatment the Cubans are making available.

But Grenada-based Cuban eye specialist Barbara Cecilia says Spice Islanders are satisfied with the programme.

"We have seen more than a thousand people, and more than one thousand and something were operated on, almost one hundred percent are satisfied with the surgical treatment," she told BBC Caribbean.

The St Lucian government has meanwhile been reassuring its own people that there's no cause for alarm from the programme, with no reports of St Lucians who had Cuban eye operations suffering complications.

King wants review

But a former health minister Stephenson King believes the Cuban initiative should be scrutinised anyway.

"We here in St Lucia must be equally concerned about the standards regarding any programme in health. It is our responsibility to ensure that whatever programmes that are being put in place meet the requisite standards in health," he said while also commending the Cuban government for the eye care programme.

Cuban eye specialist Cecilia feels that her country's goodwill gestures being unnecessarily painted in a bad light.

She argues that doctors everywhere who carry out such delicate operations always end up with a few complications.

In Jamaica the Cuban diplomat there goes further.

Gisela Garcia Rivera wants the authorities in Kingston to reveal the number of Jamaicans who have had local eye surgery and developed complications.

But she says the row over eye casualties has not derailed plans for Cuba to further assist Jamaica by setting up a state of the art eye clinic there.