Two Thousand Cuban Doctors Still in Country and Barely Surviving

By Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Since the end of last year, when the Cuban government broke the cooperation agreement with Brazil as a reaction to criticism from Jair Bolsonaro, a group of 2,000 professionals of the “Mais Médicos” (More Doctors) program decided to stay.

They were promised support by the Brazilian government, but so far there is no prospect that they will go back to practicing medicine.

Niurka Valedez Perez Schneider was one of those who decided to stay. She left her original post as a doctor to work as an administrative assistant.”When I arrive [at work], I avoid using the main entrance.

There is always one patient or another who asks whether I can not take a quick look. Caring for patients is my passion. Roberto Carlos Rodriguez Bach lives in the city of Nova Olinda do Norte, in the state of Amazonas, and is regularly approached by residents looking for a consultation.

After living there for five years, he married a Brazilian woman, had two children and does not hide the longing for providing medical care in the indigenous district where he used to work.”Since I left, the post remains vacant. The information is that this week a person should start working there. But imagine five months without a fixed doctor.

“While the village waited for a doctor, Bach saw his savings disappear. The solution was to start working with his wife selling farofa with salted meat in the town square. “I do it at night. By day, I work in a supermarket stocking supplies.”

The Brothers

Called “brothers” in Bolsonaro’s government program, Cubans believed they would have an opportunity to continue in the program created by Dilma Rousseff’s government in 2013 to place doctors in hard-to-reach areas where Brazilians were not interested in working.

In November, after Dilma’s impeachment and under new president Michel Temer, then Health Minister Gilberto Occhi, said that Cuban doctors interested in staying in the country would receive assistance.”We were humiliated. Our turn never came”, says Niurka.

The estimate is that about 700 Cuban doctors have married Brazilians and are therefore allowed to work in the country. But this is not true for the practice of medicine.

Foreigners who are not in the Mais Médicos program can only exercise medicine if they validate their diploma by being approved in a MEC exam.

Bach is not the only Cuban doctor whose job has been vacant for a long time. As soon as the cooperation with the government of Cuba was extinguished, the Ministry of Health organized continuous recruitment processes to fill 8,517 vacancies that opened up with the end of Mais Médicos.

The positions were filled by doctors trained in Brazil or graduated abroad, but, by the beginning of April, 1,052 professionals had already left the program. The challenges of filling health posts can be seen in the Diário Oficial (Official Gazette).

Last week, to ease the discontent of town administrators – the main affected, especially in primary care – the Ministry of Health loosened the penalties for incomplete Family Health Program teams.

Previously, municipalities that did not replace staff members within 60 days were penalized. Now, this deadline is six months. Municipal secretaries are among the groups putting the most pressure for the situation of Cuban doctors to be resolved. The group favors granting authorization for Cubans to work for a specific period.

Ministry of Health in Favour

The authorization is already granted by the Ministry of Health to doctors trained abroad. Conditions are that professionals fulfill a minimum workload and only work on primary care in the cities served by Mais Médicos.

Temporary authorization for Cuban doctors to work would support them while they prepared to take the validation test. To newspaper Estadão, minister of health Luiz Henrique Mandetta said that the changes have to be made through Congress.

It is estimated that 2,000 Mais Médicos doctors decided to stay following the end of the program. Of these, only 22 professionals were able to continue exercising their profession after securing this right in court.

Source: Estadão