BREAKING: Cuba to pull doctors out of Brazil after President-elect Bolsonaro demands
Cuba has announced it will withdraw thousands of its doctors from Brazil after the South American nation’s president-elect Jair Bolsonaro questioned their training and demanded changes to their contracts.
The far-right Bolsonaro, who takes office on 1 January, said in an interview this month that the 11,420 Cuban doctors working in poor and remote parts of Brazil could only stay if they received 100% of their pay and their families could join them.
Under the terms of the agreement with Cuba, brokered via the Pan-American Health Organization, Havana receives the bulk of the doctors’ wages.
Bolsonaro threatened to break off diplomatic relations with Havana over the program, saying it trampled on the rights of the doctors by handing the Cuban government 75% of their pay and denying mothers the right to have their children with them.
“That is just torture for a mother,” Bolsonaro said in the 2 November interview with Brasilia’s Correio Braziliense newspaper. He also questioned the qualifications of the Cuban doctors and said they would have to renew their licenses in Brazil.
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