Brazil keeping door open for Cuban doctors

Brazil keeping door open for Cuban doctors



CUBA STANDARD — The Brazilian Health Ministry denied it dropped the idea

of contracting Cuban doctors and said it may restart negotiations with Cuba.



Brazil's foreign minister announced in May his government was

negotiating with Cuba to contract 6,000 doctors under the Mais Médicos

(More Doctors) program. On July 8, in an apparent response to Brazilian

medical associations' protests, health ministry officials said they

temporarily suspended the negotiations.



Health Minister Alexandre Padilha recently talked about giving priority

to doctors from Spain and Portugal. Physicians from these countries

offer more "guarantees in terms of specialization," Padilha said. Brazil

also signed an agreement with Argentina about joint training of medical

personnel.



Even so, the health ministry may not be able to reach the numbers it

wants. After a first round of individual contracting that ended July 31,

1,753 professionals signed up with Mais Médicos, according to the

ministry, far below the program promoters' ambitions to deploy some

15,000 doctors in underserved areas of the country. A second round of

hiring will begin Aug. 15, after which the ministry will assess its needs.



During the wave of demonstrations in June, which partly targeted bad

public healthcare, President Dilma Rousseff promised emergency measures

to provide medical services to Brazilians "as fast as possible" and

increased the budget for Mais Médicos from $3.55 billion to $5.61 billion.



"The ministry is working with the model of individual calls," said a

communiqué released Aug. 5. "Once this process is closed, the ministry

is open to discuss with other countries, including Cuba, the possibility

to establish other forms of cooperation, be that with governments or

universities."



Cuba provides its doctors as a group, through a state company.



Mais Médicos offers contracts for 15,000 doctors to be deployed in rural

and poor urban areas. The program, launched July 8, explicitly includes

the option to contract foreign physicians, should the number of

Brazilian doctors be insufficient.



Brazilian physicians' organizations immediately attacked the program

after the government announced it; the doctors' criticism targeted

mainly the hiring of foreign doctors and was amplified by street

protests and physicians' strikes in June.



Arguing that bad healthcare in Brazil is not caused by a lack of

doctors, but due to insufficient resources for hospitals and clinics,

two physicians' organizations, CMF (Conselho Federal de Medicina) and

Fenam (Federação Nacional dos Médicos) sued the ministries of health and

education over Mais Médicos. Foreign doctors who didn't study in Brazil

should pass a challenging exam and prove they master the Portuguese

language, the organizations maintain. Brazilian courts have thrown out

two of five lawsuits against Mais Médicos.



Mais Médicos is supported by the Brazilian Association of Municipalities

(ABM), which argues that the lack of doctors in poor areas makes it

necessary to recruit foreign doctors for "immediate solutions."



According to government surveys, there are only 1.8 doctors per 1,000

inhabitants in Brazil, representing a deficit of 50,000 doctors. The

deficit is most pronounced in the Northeast, the Amazon region, and in

poor suburbs of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.



Cuba has 6.7 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants; many of the country's

physicians specialize in rural and low-income medicine.



A Brazilian contract would be a major breakthrough for Cuba's ambitions

to turn medical service exports into hard-currency business. As it was

originally structured, Brazil would have offered Cuba's second-largest

for-pay contract for deployment of medical personnel abroad.



Under a decade-old oil-for-services agreement, more than 20,000 Cuban

healthcare workers are deployed in Venezuela. On a smaller scale, Cuba

is providing for-pay medical services in Portugal, Qatar, Algeria and

elsewhere. Also, Norway and Brazil have funded medical relief efforts

involving Cuban doctors in Haiti.



Source: "Brazil keeping door open for Cuban doctors « Cuba Standard,

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http://www.cubastandard.com/2013/08/06/brazil-keeping-door-open-for-cuban-doctors/