Maria Ochoa is a bit lost in her emotions. " As a doctor, I am of course very concerned about the coronavirus… and, at the same time, so happy to be able to start working again! ", confides by telephone this 52-year-old Cuban doctor, now based in Olinda (Pernambuco), on the Brazilian Northeast coast.
In early May, like several hundred other doctors from the Caribbean island, and in the middle of a pandemic due to the coronavirus – which had killed almost 14,000 people on Thursday May 14 – Maria Ochoa was able to return to the famous social program “Mais Medicos” (“more doctors”) which, thanks to the dispatch of thousands of foreign doctors, mainly Cuban, made it possible to offer basic care to the populations of poorest regions of Brazil.
The program was successfully launched in 2013 by the left of the ruling Workers' Party (PT). But everything changed in November 2018. In open conflict with the new far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, Havana suddenly ended his participation in "Mais Medicos". About 8,300 Cubanos working in Brazil find themselves unemployed and banned from practicing. Some 1,800 of them will not return home.
" I was in a relationship with a Brazilian, so I decided to stay in Brazil ", recalls Maria Ochoa, then affected for almost five years in the destitute Amazonian city of Cujubim (Rondônia). The following months were difficult. " In the region, there was no work for me, even as a seller in pharmacies … to survive, I started to give Spanish lessons in the state capital, Porto Velho ", recalls Maria Ochoa. A real humiliation for this specialist in geriatrics, with three decades of career behind her: “ I fell into depression. "
"Mais Medicos" target of Jair Bolsonaro
For a year and a half, for her and the other Cuban doctors who remained in Brazil, the wait for a license to practice was long. Quickly overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government resolved, in early March 2020, to reintegrate Cubanos to the “Mais Medicos” program. According to the data provided to World through the ministry of health, 526 professionals have already started working in 354 municipalities. Hundreds of others could follow the same path.
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