This is like bread from heaven! he recalled thinking.
Mr. Costa soon discovered Ramona Matos Rodríguez, a Cuban doctor who had defected to Miami from a mission to Brazil, and helped her become the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing the Pan-American Health Organization of forced labor and human trafficking.
In a court filing, lawyers for the organization said the allegations were grossly inaccurate and bear almost no resemblance to reality. Experts say the lawsuit is at best a long shot, but, in politics, it made an impact.
Without waiting for a court ruling, Mr. Costa, a founder of the Miami-based Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, rushed the lawsuit to the attention of powerful friends in Congress and the White House. It is just despicable what they are doing to these poor doctors, Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, said in an interview last month.
Citing the accusations, the State Department pressured Ecuador, Bolivia and El Salvador until they expelled more than a thousand Cuban medical workers last year.
But the bigger blows hit the Pan-American Health Organization.
It is often known as the regional arm of the World Health Organization, yet it is decades older and receives much more funding from member states. Public-health experts credit the agency with eradicating smallpox, polio and measles from Latin America long before they were eliminated from Africa and Asia.
The Trump administration focused intensely on the organizations ties to Cuba, even though its involvement with the Cuban doctors had ended about a year earlier, when they left Brazil. The United States stopped paying its annual dues of $110 million, more than half the agencys core budget. Mr. Bolsonaros government also froze payment of its $24 million in dues. Mr. Bolsonaro and his staff refused to comment for this article. John Ullyot, a National Security Council spokesman, defended the American funding cutoff as an important step to demand accountability from all international health organizations that depend on American taxpayer resources.read more
How Trump and Bolsonaro Broke Latin America’s Covid-19 Defenses
