Cuban doctors head home, leaving Brazilian towns with no care

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS NOVEMBER 22, 2018 / 4:55 PM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

Cuban doctors head home, leaving Brazilian towns with no care

Anthony Boadle
4 MIN READ

BRASILIA (Reuters) - The first of thousands of Cuban doctors began to return home on Thursday after criticism by Brazil’s far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro prompted Cuba’s government to sever a cooperation agreement, leaving millions of Brazilians without medical care.

Bolsonaro said the Cuban doctors were being used as “slave labor” because the Cuban government took 75 percent of their salaries. He said the program that began in 2013 could only continue if they got full pay and were allowed to bring their families from Cuba.

Bolsonaro, an admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump, was elected last month by Brazilians fed up with rising crime and rampant corruption that reached new highs during almost a decade and a half of leftist governments with close ties to Cuba.

The Cubans practiced mostly in poor and remote areas of Brazil where Brazilian doctors do not want to work. The government is now scrambling to replace them in 8,332 positions left vacant by the Cubans’ returns.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-cuba-doctors/cuban-doctors-head-home-leaving-brazilian-towns-with-no-care-idUSKCN1NR2C5

[GatoGordo]

1. Sadly, Cuba is recalling them

Bolsonaro isn't kicking them out.

The vast majority of the Cuban "doctors" would have stayed and continued working. However, the Castroists in Cuba won't let their families join them, nor will they allow to get paid the value of their labor. The Castroists are more concerned about hard currency than the noise they make about their humanitarian gestures.

In the end, everyone is a loser.