An aircraft with 203 Cuban health collaborators landed today in Havana, as Cuba continues to bring back her physicians who worked in the Mas Medicos program in Brazil.
This is the twenty-third flight from the South American country since November 22, following the decision to stop participating in that initiative, due to the aggressiveness by Brazilian president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, against the Cuban government and aid workers.
Authorities headed by Communist Party Central Committee member Joel Queipo and Vice Minister of Health Alfredo Gonzalez welcomed the returnees at Jose Marti International Airport.
On behalf of the group that arrived from the city of Brasilia, Dr. Darlinis Gomez expressed pride for being back in Cuba and reiterated her willingness to be wherever the Revolution and the homeland need them.
She also said they represented her country with dignity in the Mas Medicos mission, which program was created in 2013 to bring primary attention to isolated and poorest areas in Brazil, a task interrupted by Bolsonaro’s threats and conditioning, who in advanced showed his intention to change the terms agreed with the Dilma Rousseff administration and the Pan American Health Organization.
About 20,000 Cuban health professionals joined the initiative through which more than 113 million people were treated, many of them never before benefited from primary health care as they live in ‘favelas’ (shanty towns), indigenous communities, the Amazon and other poor and outlying regions of Brazil.
(Prensa Latina)