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EspañolA Cuban doctor working in Brazil as part of that country’s Más Médicos (More Doctors) program has abandoned her post and fled to the United States with her husband and son, Brazilian press reported on Wednesday.
According to local daily Folha de Sao Paulo, Dianelys San Román Parrado, who was working in the Jandira municipality in San Paulo’s metropolitan region, left for Miami, Florida with her spouse and five-year-old son.
Parrado’s decision was reportedly prompted by “pressure” exerted by the Cuban government, which ruled in March that the families of those working in Brazil as part of a cooperation agreement signed by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff had to return to Cuba if they had been present in the South American country for over three months.
Parrado signed up to the More Doctors program soon after its creation in 2013. Her absconding to the United States is reportedly the first time that a Cuban doctor in Brazil has deserted their post due to pressure from Havana.
Earlier in March, opposition Senator Cassio Cunha of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party proposed to the Public Ministry that Cuban doctors working in Brazil receive their salaries directly, as is the case with visiting medical personnel from other countries, and not via the Cuban government.
Cunha added that of the 10,400 reales (US$3,200) dollars assigned by the Brazilian government, the Cuban medics themselves only received 3,120 reales ($965).
The Cuban government has previously threatened to replace those professionals whose relatives refused to return to Cuba. Havana fears that its doctors in Brazil might follow the example of many of their counterparts in a similar program in Venezuela and abandon their posts.
Brazil’s Health Ministry meanwhile claimed that it couldn’t interfere in labor relations between the doctors and their country of origin.
The More Doctors program currently reaches around 50 million people, the majority in poor areas on the periphery of Brazil’s sprawling cities or in remote locations in the country’s interior.
The measure is designed to make up the reticence of local doctors to take positions in far-flung or poor areas in Brazil. The vast majority of the 11,000 doctors employed are from Cuba, who were contracted under a cooperation agreement with the Pan American Health Organization.
Source: El Universal.
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