The 35 Cuban doctors who worked at the Family Health program, in Tocantins state, Brazil, were rehired and are already working in the small municipalities of that state. The doctors had been fired last week following decision of the Brazilian Federal Justice.
On the 15th, 61 doctors departed back to Cuba in an airplane sent by that country’s government. The others remained in Brazil because they had family here. A total of 96 Cuban doctors were fired.
According to the Secretary of Health of Tocantins, Gismar Gomes, the 35 doctors that are back to work have their jobs guaranteed until the end of the year, when their contract expires.
He explained that the contracts were revalidated because of the difficulty to find Brazilian doctors willing to work in cities in the interior of the country.
“Now is the time. Brazil needs to think and create criteria for Medicine students of public Brazilian universities. These students need to provide some services for the Brazilian people, as a retribution for the free school the people have provided for them,” said the Secretary of Health.
For Gismar Gomes, the Federal government must take measures to avoid that Brazilians studying medicine in Cuba have any problems.
“We had to be careful when handling the deportation of Cuban doctors for illegally working in Brazil. Someone could think that if the Cuban university is not good for Cubans to work in Brazil, then it wouldn’t be good either for Brazilians to learn medicine over there.”
Agência Brasil