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Doctores cubanos en Amazonía, Brasil / Cuban doctors in Amazon, Brazil.
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The Más Médicos Program (More Doctors), where Cuban healthcare professionals play the leading role, has been tremendously successful for the South American giant, since it has taken primary healthcare coverage up to 100 percent, also giving priority to the poorest and hard-to-access areas
“Cuban doctors look in people’s eyes, touch their bodies, listen to what they have to say, treat them with dignity…” Those where the words issued by Arthur Chioro, who was Brazil’s Healthcare Minister at the time, during the past edition of 2015 Cuba-Health International Convention.
“It’s all about technical quality, commitment and human manners, affection and respect, so they establish the doctor-patient relation and treat them,” the minister said.
He talked about the Brazilian people’s satisfaction when being benefited by the Más Médicos program, which has included over 11,400 Cuban collaborators since 2013 as requested by President Dilma Rousseff with the participation of the Pan American Health Organization, and the way access to primary healthcare had ironed out reticence.
Beyond supporting the family health strategy and assuring primary healthcare, Brazil was learning a new way to take care of people’s health and Cuban doctors were a benchmark in this field: preventing diseases and understanding people as bio-psycho-social beings, connected to the surrounding environment.
Without taking into account the origin, vulnerability or poverty of these people, the Cuban doctors went there to do what they are good at: healing both body and soul. In over 500 years of official history in Brazil, it was the first time this country had doctors visiting all native hamlets. One of those towns with some 800,000 inhabitants, for example, had never had the warranty of counting on a healthcare team.
The Más Médicos program changed that reality, reached out to Ama¬zonia-based settlements, semi-arid regions and hard-access rural areas, as well as the outskirts of big cities. “Sao Pablo houses millions of people and thousands of them did not have medical care in its outskirts,” the minister mentioned.
Three years later, this program, based on the conviction that is possible for everybody to enjoy healthcare, is still present throughout the Brazilian geography, in nearly 4,000 out of this nation’s 5,000 municipalities.
“The quality of the training and services provided by Cuban healthcare professionals, their willingness to learn several languages and even native dialects to treat people, and go where nobody else wants to go when it comes to saving lives,” are characteristics that distinguish healthcare professionals from the largest Caribbean island, according to the head of the Foreign Business Division for Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos S.A. (CSMC S.A.), Eucalia Mantilla.
Nowadays, CSMC S.A. is present in over 25 countries in all continents, with more than 11 thousand collaborators.
“We are in charge of the medical team deployed in Algeria, the first country where Cuba sent medical collaborators, with over 900 professionals providing assistance in different provinces, in three ophthalmologic hospitals and primary healthcare, with a comprehensive program focused on mothers and their babies,” the specialist explained.
Cuban medicine has also been taken to over six African countries, with more than 500 collaborators, and it is also increasing its presence in such nations as Mongolia, Vietnam and Bhutan.
“Moreover, we have contributed to the organization of the healthcare system in some countries, which have requested the Cuban expertise in a bid to improve the wellness of their people, especially in terms of primary healthcare,” Eucalia Mantilla underlined.
Más Médicos in Brazil is one of the clearest examples in this field.