While the rest of the country is suffering from a shortage of primary care physicians, Miami is awash with Cuban doctors who have defected in recent years. By some estimates, 6,000 medical professionals have left Cuba in the last six years. Cuban doctors have been fleeing to South Florida since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, but the pace intensified after 2006. That was when the Department of Homeland Security began a program that allowed Cuban medical personnel "who study or work in a third country under the direction of the Cuban government" to travel to the United States legally.