Tim Padgett – Time Magazine, 09/04/2013
A Brazilian prosecutor is investigating whether President Dilma Rousseff’s government violated federal labor laws by recruiting 4,000 Cuban physicians this month to work in remote areas like the Amazon. That’s just the latest wrinkle in Brazil’s acrimonious Cuban-doctors controversy, which has everyone from Brazilian physicians in Brasília to Cuban-American politicians in Washington, D.C., up in arms.
But there is a much larger problem involved here than Marxist medics — and it’s one that plagues not just Brazil but most of Latin America. Whether or not Brazilian judges eventually let the Cuban physicians stay or order them to leave, it won’t solve Brazil’s doctor shortage, especially in the medically deprived rural and favela (slum) zones the Cubans are headed to.
If you’re wondering why Brazil was the site of sometimes violent street protests this summer, this latest dustup offers one useful clue. Brazil is now the world’s sixth largest economy and considers itself on the doorstep of the developed world. Yet, as Brazilian demonstrators are all too aware, its education system is widely regarded as abysmal, especially science preparation. Brazilian physicians aren’t bad practitioners, though Rousseff has a point when she says many are too elitist to practice in the boonies. But while the medical community may share much of the blame, critics say Brazil’s notoriously corrupt and indifferent officialdom has done little to provide the infrastructure needed to create and support enough doctors to serve the nation’s 200 million people.
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