The news of the week is undoubtedly the decision of the Cuban government not to continue as a member of the Brazilian More Doctors Program, which was joined in 2013 under the government of Dilma Rousseff as part of a tripartite agreement with the Pan American Health (PAHO).
The contribution of Cuba, involved about 20 thousand doctors, at different times, with the aim of "compensating the deficit of human resources to assist the most vulnerable groups, affected by social inequalities in peripheral areas, remote communities, rural settlements and 34 Special Indigenous Health Districts," and I quoted reports from the World Health Organization.
Now, those doctors who covered more than 3 thousand 600 municipalities, of them 700 virgins in medical care programs, and attended to 113 million patients, return to the Homeland, after "derogatory and threatening" declarations of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who reiterated his intention to modify the terms and conditions of a program signed five years ago and ratified by the de facto president Michel Temer.
Statements that, after the Cuban announcement, is becoming heated when they announced that Brazilian government would give asylum to Cubans who wanted to stay in the country, in a clear strategy of brain drain.
But beyond the causes, it is worth thinking about the consequences. The first one is for the Brazilian people and the BMDP, which does not end but will feel the lack of Cubans, while our professionals represent more than 50 percent of its strength.
The Brazilians know it. In fact, the National Council of Municipal Health Secretariats and the National Front of Mayors rushed to issue a statement in which they "lament" the interruption of cooperation with Cuba, in which 29 million people will be without medical care.
The statement, which has a warning tone to the newly elected government, warns that almost 80 percent of the country's municipalities have only a doctor thanks to the program, and that 90 percent of the consultations with the indigenous population were carried out by Cuban professionals.
It will affect, the secretaries of health and mayors say, even the sites that were not served by BMDP, due to the saturation that this loss will cause in the rest of the health system of the South American giant.
In other circumstances, it would be possible to think that the absence of the Cubans could be covered by professionals from other nations, but the proximity of Jair Bolsonaro with the Chicago School, a current of economic thought that defends the free market, and in its evolution is characterized for applications of shock in which the low-incomers wil always suffer, and the approach to dictatorial regimes such as that of Augusto Pinochet, turn off any crack of light at the end of the tunnel.
But the conclusion of the agreement with Brazil and PAHO will also have serious repercussions for the Cuban economy, which today has in the provision of services abroad, especially doctors, one of its main sources of income in currency.
That operation of subtraction, adds, and that is worth the irony, to the reduction of 9 percent of the income for services rendered in the period of 2015 to 2018, according to data provided by the member of the Center for the Study of the World Economy and Former Minister of Economy, José Luis Rodríguez.
There are no winners, after all, with this necessary break. Behind, a five-year solidarity will be mentioned in the past, which left ties and brotherhoods that no one can break, and the eternal gratitude of a people who, as the former president Dilma Rousseff said, "will need the work of these dedicated and generous professionals."