Brazil’s healthcare solution: more Cuban doctors
Monday, January 6, 2014
The Brazilian government is carrying out a controversial scheme to address a shortage of medical professionals in rural areas by importing more doctors from Cuba, reports the Financial Times:
Dr. Wlad came to Brazil in the late 1990s as part of an earlier generation of Cuban doctors working abroad to generate export earnings for the island’s dictatorship. Now Ms. Rousseff is ramping up the scheme, known as “Mas Médicos,” or “More Doctors,” with 3,000 mostly foreign medics starting work this month across Brazil.
By March next year there will be 6,600 doctors working in thousands of municipalities, the majority of them Cuban. The policy is one of the few concrete responses of Ms. Rousseff’s centre-left government to mass protests that shook Brazil in June as demonstrators attacked a perceived failure of the political classes to provide quality transport, health and education.
Source: Miami Herald (link opens in a new window)
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
