Diaz-Canel Receives Cuban Doctors Arriving from Brazil

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel received in this capital on Friday Cuban collaborators who worked on the More Doctors Program in Brazil, after the decision of withdrawing from that initiative in the face of hostility from the President-elect, Jair Bolsonaro.

They have returned with their heads held high and the country receives them proudly, said the president at the Jose Marti international airport, where a group of about 200 collaborators arrived at dawn on Friday morning.

Diaz-Canel stressed that Cuban doctors were in Brazil guided by humanism, which those defending neoliberalism cannot understand.

Bolsonaro, a representative of the Brazilian far right, conditioned the continuity of the doctors in the Brazilian Program to the revalidation of the degree and individual contracting as the only way, a position contrary to the agreements with the Pan American Health Organization.

Given these threats of the president-elect, the Ministry of Public Health announced on November 14 the decision of withdrawing from the initiative created in 2013 to favor poor and remote communities, and early this morning began the arrival of the 8,300 employees present in Brazil.

We recognize in you all those who carry out this work in the world, Diaz-Canel said to the doctors, referring to the thousands that are scattered among dozens of nations.

The head of state wrote about the reception on his Twitter account, 'Our compatriots return with dignity, turned into #MoreThanDoctors because they went where nobody did, to cure and treat diseases and to animate the soul of the needy. They showed that a better world is possible. A tribute to #FidelCastro #HastaSiempreComandante.'