The medical team, which landed in Rome on Sunday night before travelling on to the Lombard capital of Milan, departed Havana airport to resounding applause and cheers of encouragement.
The Caribbean nation is renowned for sending its specialist doctors to emergency areas around the world, with Cuban medics celebrated for their frontline work in fighting cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa.
However, this is the first time that Cuba has sent doctors to Italy, a country famous for its top-class health system but whose hospitals and healthcare workers in the north are now strained to breaking point.
“We are all afraid but we have a revolutionary duty to fulfil, so we take our fear and put it to one side,” said intensive care specialist Leonardo Fernandez before leaving Cuba.
The arrival of the Cuban doctors comes as Italy recorded a drop in its daily death count on Sunday, registering 651 deaths compared to 793 the day before.
This is the sixth medical brigade Cuba has sent in recent days to combat the spread of coronavirus abroad.
It has sent teams to socialist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua as well as Jamaica, Suriname and Grenada.
Britain also thanked Cuba last week for allowing a British cruise ship that had been turned away by several Caribbean ports to dock at the island and for permitting the evacuation of the more than 600 passengers on board.
