TEHRAN, November 17 - The Brazilian Health Ministry said Friday it's holding meetings with the Pan American Health Organization on the exodus of thousands Cuban doctors and finding replacements.
![Brazil rushes to find doctors to fill 8,300 positions left by Cubans Brazil rushes to find doctors to fill 8,300 positions left by Cubans](/files/en/news/2018/11/17/106897_408.jpg)
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - "By early next week we will complete work on a proposal to select professionals to cover 8,332 vacant posts to be left by Cuban doctors," the ministry said Friday.
The announcement came hours after the first group of 196 Cuban doctors returned to Cuba on Thursday, said Granma, Cuba's official newspaper.
The group was scheduled to leave, as they'd completed their service in Brazil, but another group scheduled to replace them "will no longer be available," the newspaper reported.
The program started in 2013 as an agreement between Cuba, the Pan American Health Organization and Brazil, at the time led by former President Dilma Rousseff.
The Cuban government ended the program on Wednesday, as it said that plans by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro to sign individual agreements with each doctor was not acceptable.
Rousseff said Bolsonaro's plan for individual payments were offensive, as they ignored the Cuban system, which compensates the doctors with a salary. She said it also ignored that the PanAmerican Health Organization guaranteed the qualification level of the personnel.
Cuba, which has free medical schools, sends doctors to several areas of the world in government-to-government agreements. The revenue, or goods, it receives in exchange are distributed to the budget that goes for the entire population.
Rousseff is from the left-oriented Workers Party that lost the October election to Bolsonaro, who will lead Brazil for the next four years. He won on a campaign marked by nationalist rhetoric and heavy criticism of left-oriented organizations.
Source: UPI