Brazil plan to import 4,000 Cuban doctors meets opposition

Brazil plan to import 4,000 Cuban doctors meets opposition

Medical group claims under-qualified medics without Portuguese will

endanger patients' lives

Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 01:00



Brazil is to go ahead with a controversial plan to import 4,000 Cuban

doctors to work in poor, remote regions of the country where the public

health service struggles to field enough local doctors.

The first 400 Cuban medics will arrive as early as Monday, with another

2,000 due by October and the remaining 1,600 in the country by the end

of the year.

President Dilma Rousseff first proposed turning to Cuba for help with

the chronic shortages in the public health system in May but froze talks

between the two countries in the face of resistance from Brazil's

leading medical associations.



Shortages

But the subsequent failure to hire sufficient doctors from other

countries led to this week's agreement. Mayors from across Brazil asked

the government to provide an extra 15,460 doctors to fill shortages.

But a federal programme named More Medics succeeded in filling only

1,618 places. Most of those entering the programme were Brazilian

professionals with little of the expected interest from countries such

as Argentina, Spain and Portugal materialising.

Brazil's foreign minister Antonio Patriota defended the plan to a

congressional committee as a means of providing "the best possible

medical services for the Brazilian population". But importing medics

from the communist island has provoked the ire of right-wing

congressmen, who have vowed to go to the supreme court to block the

programme, with one denouncing it as "the exportation of ideology" and

calling President Rousseff "Hitler in a dress".



Opposed

Many of the country's medical associations are also opposed. Brazil's

Federal Medical Council denounced it as "electioneering, irresponsible

and disrespectful" and will seek to block it. It claimed the programme

could let under-qualified Cuban doctors without knowledge of Portuguese

"put at risk the health of Brazilians".

This week's agreement will see Brazil pay €156 million to the

Pan-American Health Organisation, the regional branch of the World

Health Organisation, for the Cuban assistance through to February. It in

turn will pass the money onto the Cuban government which will pay the

doctors' salaries. Under the scheme, each doctor earns a monthly salary

of €3,060 but it is not clear if Cuba's government will pass all of this

on to its doctors who go to Brazil.

Lack of funds for Brazil's chronically understaffed public health system

was one of the targets of mass street protests in June. The government

struggles to hire medics to work in poor regions, unable to compete with

the higher salaries and better conditions offered by private health plan

providers.



Source: "Brazil plan to import 4,000 Cuban doctors meets opposition -

World News | Latest International News Headlines | The Irish Times -

Sat, Aug 24, 2013" -

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/brazil-plan-to-import-4-000-cuban-doctors-meets-opposition-1.1503823