Brazil planning to regularize situation of Cuban doctors

Brazil’s Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said that the ministry plans to regularize the situation of approximately 2 thousand Cuban doctors that stayed in Brazil after the Cuban government’s departure from Brazil’s More Doctors program. “They’re facing the conditions of an exile,” Mandetta argued.

During a Wednesday (Mar. 27) public hearing with the Senate’s Commission for Social Affairs, Mandetta explained that the initiative comes as part of a yet unfinished proposal to revamp the More Doctors program, which aims at bringing health agents to underserved regions in Brazil. Changes are expected to be submitted to congress in April, the minister reported.

“We need a proposal outlining how these people may practice their occupation under the law, as they are victims of this negotiation made between the two countries rather than actually perpetrators of something that allowed them to enter the country illegally,” Mandetta argued.

“We have a number of professionals today working at health secretariats, or behind drugstore counters, or as community agents, etc. They could have their professional situation regularized, with the option to work in a free, democratic country,” he concluded.