MIAMI, United States. — The return to power in Brazil of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva —who will take office on January 1— could bring back the “More doctors” program, which was canceled by the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Senator Humberto Costa, who should be part of the health coordination of the president-elect’s transition team, declared last Wednesday that the new government will resume the “More doctors” program and will also launch a campaign to resume vaccination in the country.
However, contrary to what happened during Dilma Rousseff’s mandate, the new version of the plan does not contemplate bringing doctors from abroad, since there are enough available in Brazil.
“We want a project, a program that has the principles of ‘More Doctors’, to ensure that these gaps in medical care can be covered. Now, the design that we are going to do is still going to be built, because today there are a significant number of doctors,” Costa said in statements collected by the digital portal metropoles.
In the specific case of Cubans who decided not to return to the island, they will be taken into account to increase coverage in disadvantaged areas.
“There are doctors who graduated abroad and have not yet been revalidated, there are Cuban doctors who stayed in Brazil and there are doctors who graduated and are not being absorbed by the labor market. So, a similar program could be implemented, but with a predominance of Brazilian doctors,” the senator added.
The “More doctors” program was scheduled to be implemented in 2013. For its implementation, thousands of Cuban health professionals were brought to the South American giant, who received a tiny part of the salary agreed between Havana and Brasilia.
After Jair Bolsonaro came to power in 2018, the Cuban regime decided to remove the doctors from Brazil after not accepting the conditions imposed by the ruler to guarantee Cuba’s continuity in the program. Despite the departure of the medical brigades from the South American giant, around a thousand Cuban doctors remained in Brazil.
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