Cuba has sent many medical doctors to Suriname. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, 50 doctors were dispatched to Suriname. Cuba also provided scholarships and medical education, however the program was cancelled in August 2020. In the 2020s, Cuban refugees increasingly used Suriname as a transit country to the United States. In January 2021, a group of 500 Cubans stranded in South Drain where they were denied access to Guyana from where they had hoped to catch a flight to the United States.
