A six-member Air Force medical team has returned to Utah from Cuba, and another team from Hill has taken its place in an ongoing humanitarian effort at Guantanamo Naval Base.
Members of the returned team said Wednesday the clinics they helped staff provided medical care to more than 130,000 Cuban refugees during the team's 90-day assignment to refugee camps at the American base.Thousands of Cuban and Haitian refugees who fled their native islands in unsuccessful attempts to reach the United States are being housed at Guantanamo and at American military installations in Panama.
All of the refugees - referred to politically by the Cuban government as "migrants" - arrived at the camps after being plucked from rafts by U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships.
Doctors in the camps found the arriving refugees suffering mostly from dehydration and "sea sores" that developed "from dangling in the sea for hours and days," said Maj. David Sullivan, the doctor from Hill's 649th Medical Group who led the medical team that just returned.
The doctor, physician's assistant and four medical technicians were well-received but encountered people used to a different system of medical care.
"The Cubans as a society are pretty healthy," Sullivan said. "But they have a care-on-demand system where (patients) tell doctors what they want. They didn't know how to take us telling them what kind of treatment they needed."
The American base is segregated from the rest of the island by fences and two mine fields - one American and one Cuban - so the team never left the base during their duty.
"There were things to do," said Airman Bobbie Chaves. "You could rent a boat, snorkel, and there were lots of restaurants."
Sullivan said off-duty activities could be categorized as either eating or exercising.
For the refugees, many offered to do work for the Americans just for something to do. Play areas and schools have been established for children. Sullivan said a number of the adults in the camp have radios and stay in touch with political developments by listening to radio broadcasts or by using telephones in the camps to call family members in the United States.
Some of the refugees hope to leave the camps and return to their homes in Cuba, but most are willing to stay in the camps indefinitely, holding to their hopes of reaching the United States, Sullivan said.