Brazilian Doctors Oppose Hiring Cubans
HAVANA TIMES – Brazilian doctors objected Wednesday to the recent announcement that their government plans to hire 6000 Cuban doctors to meet the shortfall of health professionals in interior regions of the nation, reports AP.
The president of the National Federation of Physicians, Geraldo Ferreira Filho, questioned the formation of Cuban professionals to the National Congress, revealing that in several years, up to 95% of the foreign educated doctors who attempted to have their medical degrees revalidated in Brazil failed to pass.
For his part, the mayor of the city of Bage, Dudu Colombo, defended the hiring of foreign doctors to fill the gap in remote areas, where there is about one doctor for every thousand inhabitants, according to the Federal Council of Medicine.
“We are demanding more doctors because people need doctors. There is a shortage of 6000 doctors in the Family Health Strategy program of the Family” he told Congress.
The export of health services is, moreover, one of the main earners of the Cuban economy.
Well, I’m no hero, but thanks anyway 🙂
You can’t know it, Luis, but you’re something of a hero to me. Thank you so much for you responses in this blog. You educate me–and alot of others, I’m sure. Cheers.
‘less access to diagnostic tools more available to US doctors’
Keyword here; See how the ‘insignificant’ sanctions from the US damage the Cuban population as a whole, because they make the purchase of high-end medical technology WAY harder than it should, even for a poor country?
‘Better-trained’? Have you read the original link? You should have, if you truly are what you say you are, as Portuguese in the reading level is as easy as Spanish. I can read Spanish articles slowly even though I do not speak Spanish. Anyway Here almost 60% of medical students comes from private universities. And overall they PALE compared to public college education. They are mostly rich kids (even those who attend public colleges) who attend rich people in the private healthcare system. It is a segregating model (almost) like the one in the US, because here at least we have universal coverage. It’s lacking but it’s WAY better than nothing – I myself got expensive (and I mean WAY expensive) medicine FREE from the SUS when I needed it. Have you seen the graph showing the doctors per 1,000 population on each region of Brazil and how they are concentrated in the Rio – São Paulo axis? Do you reckon to understand the meaning of this simple graph?
You just missed the point entirely to make propaganda that one of the things that Cuba actually does right and it is internationally recognized for is bogus. Go home.
Maybe the better-trained Brazilian doctors can develop a plan to supervise and train the Cubans. In this way, the underserved community can still receive care and the Cubans can gain professionally as well.
A fully-licensed Cuban doctor who wishes to practice in the US must return to classroom instruction for at least two more years, then one year of interning and depending on his specialty, several more years of residency. As a result, not as many Cuban doctors continue to practice medicine once they arrive in the US. Generally speaking, while Cuban doctors are fairly competent in general medicine, they come up way short in the major specialties. They arrive in the US with ample Doctor-Patient clinical experience but lack the depth of information within their specialty necessary to practice at the highest levels. Language issues notwithstanding, Cuban doctors are low-cost healers but lack diagnostic competency. This could be due to fewer years spent being educated and less access to diagnostic tools more available to US doctors. There is a valid debate as to whether or not poor people are being discriminated against by limiting their access to only second-rate medical care. Even a second-rate doctor is better than none at all. The majority of advances in clinical medicine in the world today continue to take place in US hospitals and labratories. I’ll take Johns Hopkins Hospital or the Mayo Clinic over a Cuban doctor any day.
That’s not true, ESPECIALLY coming from Cuba.
I’ll translate a piece of the above article for you:
“In 2005, when the Tocantins governor saw that he couldn’t find doctors for the vast majority of the small and distant cities of his State, he made an agreement with Cuba and saw the situation quickly change with the presence of only a few hundred Cuban health professionals working in those remote areas”
“The reaction of the medical entities in Tocantins, compromised with the low quality of public healthcare which favours the private sector, was one of desesperation. They only calmed down when a judge in first instance decided to imediatelly expel the Cuban doctors in 2007”
You are wrong. Dead wrong. The Brazilian medical council is extremelly elitist and has carnar relationships with the farmaceutical industry. The majority of doctors would never set a foot in a favela or go to the vast regions of my country that lack doctors, hospitals and medicine because there’s no money involved.
A sugar-cane cutter that works 18 hours a day in a semi-slavery system where he literally dies working – http://www.hubbertpeak.com/br/sugarcaneworkers.htm – would be most pleased by this opportunity of having health care that the needs and would never be able to get otherwise.
There’s an excellent article in Portuguese but, if you truly are what you are you should be able to understand it because Portuguese is very much alike Spanish – http://www.pragmatismopolitico.com.br/2013/05/medicos-cubanos-e-o-conselho-de-medicina.html
They make this extremelly difficult test for validating foreigners to work here to sustain the disgusting, profit-motivated and segregated medicine that exists here – and it’s still better than the one in the US because only because of the SUS.
So what lesson can we take from this boys and girls? If you are a third world country lacking adequate medical professionals, you are glad to accept a Cuban medical brigade. Something is better than nothing, so they say. But if you are an emerging country with higher medical standards like Brazil, ‘good enough’ just won’t do. Good for them!
A diploma does not a doctor make. Especially one from a Cuban medical school.