More Doctors Program
Brasilia, Jan 5 (RHC) - The Secretary of Primary Care of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, Nesio Fernandes, affirmed that the More Doctors program, extinct during the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro, will be resumed.
«The agenda to resume More Doctors is immediate. We want doctors to be placed in all Brazilian municipalities in a short period”, revealed Fernandes, quoted by a local newspaper.
He explained that now the priority will be to hire Brazilians, with registration in the regional councils and offer places to nationals trained abroad. After that, he specified, other positions will be filled by foreigners.
Established in 2013 by the Government of Dilma Rousseff, More Doctors should increase the number of professionals for care, mainly in cities in the interior of the country.
The doctors came from various nations, including Cuba, which revalidated on November 14, 2018, the solidarity and humanist vocation of its health professionals in dozens of countries, by announcing the departure of More Doctors from Brazil, in the face of conditions and derogatory statements from the then elected ruler Bolsonaro over his specialists.
In 2019, the former president replaced the More Doctors program with Doctors for Brazil.
However, according to Fernandes, until today, a large part of the vacancies of the Cuban doctors who left the South American giant "has not been filled."
As part of More Doctors, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health stated in a statement that in the last five years, nearly 20,000 Cuban collaborators attended 113,359,000 patients in some 3,600 municipalities, "reaching coverage for up to 60 million Brazilians».
Following the departure of the Caribbean doctors, the current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Lula thanked the Cuban professionals who participated in the program and Cuba´s support to other peoples of the world with its medicine.
He assured that the bonds of brotherhood between the peoples of Brazil and Cuba are much stronger than irrational hatred and Cuban professionals "earned the affection and gratitude of millions of Brazilians."
That is why I want to say to the people of Cuba: I feel very proud of your doctors and medical schools. You have won millions of admirers, and millions of grateful people in Brazil, the founder of the Workers' Party stressed at the time. (Source: PL)
