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BRASILIA (Reuters) – The first of thousands of Cuban doctors began returning home Thursday after critics of the Brazilian right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro urged the Cuban government to break a cooperation agreement, leaving millions of Brazilians without medical care.
Bolsonaro said Cuban doctors were used as "forced labor," with the Cuban government taking 75 percent of their salaries. He said the program launched in 2013 could only continue if they received full pay and were allowed to bring their families from Cuba.
Bolsonaro, an admirer of US President Donald Trump, was elected last month by Brazilians who are fed up with the rise in crime and corruption, which has reached new heights in almost fifteen years of left-wing governments. close links with Cuba.
Cubans practiced mainly in poor and remote areas of Brazil, where Brazilian doctors do not want to work. The government is now trying to replace them with 8,332 vacant posts by Cuban returns.
Cuba has a respected health service and generates significant export earnings by sending more than 50,000 health workers to more than 60 countries.
In many Brazilian cities and the suburbs of cities that relied on Cuban doctors, waiting rooms at public health posts, generally crowded, were empty this week and announcements indicated that appointments had been canceled until at new order.
Adrielly Rodrigues, a 22-year-old pregnant woman, was denied Wednesday as she was appearing for a prenatal exam in Santa Maria, a town near the capital Brasilia.
"We are so worried because we do not have money to pay a private doctor. She is five months pregnant and still needs to be monitored and tested, "said her mother, Adriana Rodrigues.
She said that Adrielly's doctor was good, but she left now.
A national pressure group of mayors, the NPF and the council of municipal health authorities, Conasems, said in a statement that 29 million Brazilians could be deprived of basic health care. They urged the government to allow Cubans to stay.
The Ministry of Health expects next week to lift the obligation on Cubans to validate their medical degree in Brazil so that they can continue to work directly under contract with the Brazilian government and not through the the Pan American Health Organization.
It is unclear how many Cubans will want to break with the government-led anti-export drug program run by the communist government, which is present in some 60 countries, especially if they have children. in Cuba, because that would be tantamount to doing a wrong maneuver.
Bolsonaro, who will take office on 1 January, announced last week that he would grant asylum to any Cuban national who requested it, which would aggravate tensions with Havana.
Brazil hopes to fill the medical vacuum with local recruitments. In just two days since opening registration, 6,394 doctors have applied to fill the 8,332 vacant positions, said a ministry spokesman, but the credentials of these candidates need to be confirmed.
A Cuban who will remain in Brazil is Richel Collazo, who is so popular in the small town of Chapada, in southern Brazil, that the mayor has asked him to become municipal secretary for health.
"My city needs doctors and has played a key role in our medical care," Mayor Carlos Catto said by phone.
Reportage by Anthony Boadle; Edited by Bill Trott
