I’m not a fan of Brazil’s ultra-right wing president-elect Jair Bolsonaro, but his decision to nix the programme whereby more than 8,000 Cuban doctors have been working in Brazil as virtual slaves deserves unqualified international support.
What’s more, the international community should use the occasion and condemn the Washington-based Pan American Health Organization, a branch of the U.N.’s World Health Organization. PAHO has supervised the Cuban doctors’ programme in Brazil since its inception in 2013.
Under the deal between the Brazilian and Cuban governments, and brokered by PAHO, more than 18,000 Cuban doctors have been working in Brazil’s rural areas with little access to healthcare. They have received 30 percent of their salary. The remaining 70 percent goes directly to Cuba’s dictatorship.