So far, 26 flights have brought physicians to Cuba. Bolsonaro insisted on his disrespectful language against the Cuban government and medical collaborators.
Since November 22, some 5,500 health professionals have returned to the island. They were providing services in very poor and intricate communities, such as ‘favelas’ (shanty towns), indigenous communities and in the Amazon region.
On behalf of the doctors who arrived on flight 25, Dr. Abdel Abad Echevarrua highlighted the sadness of leaving behind people in great need who were treated with affection.
According to Echevarria, returning is a matter of dignity in the face of Bolsonaro’s questioning of the quality training of world-acknowledged doctors.
For his part, Alexander Simon, one of the 207 collaborators who returned on the second dawn flight, said they accomplished their task with duty. The head of the Department of International Relations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Jose Ramon Balaguer, welcomed the doctors at Havana airport.
The Deputy Minister of Health Luis Fernando Navarro was also there to receive the professionals.
These doctors provided health and life to people who are among the neediest of the continent, and they did it with humility and altruistic dedication, the official stressed.
On November 14, the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba announced the decision not to continue participating in the More Doctors for Brazil, a program created in 2013 to bring primary care to poor Brazilians under the auspice of the Pan American Health Organization. At the time of the decision, some 8,300 Cuban doctors worked in the poorest and most remote areas of Brazil, including some 700 municipalities that had never had doctors before. (Taken from Prensa Latina)
