Montevideo, Uruguay.- Cuba”s decision to withdraw doctors serving in Brazil has the full backing of the medical team that is currently working in Uruguay”s public health.

The team’s coordinator Dr. Roberto Castellon described pronouncements by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro as damaging to national dignity and lacerating the principles and morals of the Cuban professionals in cooperation missions.

‘They are unacceptable because they are outrageous’ , he said about the conditions the future president intends to impose on the presence of Cuban doctors in Brazil and that in his opinion constitute a clear attempt of brain theft.

He assured that these are shared perceptions among the 22 members of the team that works in the Ophthalmological Center Jose Marti, inside the Gustavo Saint-Bois Hospital, two hours from Montevideo.

They are followers of those who have contributed since 2007, so that after 11 years, since the beginnings of the Operation Miracle Program, they have accumulated over 75,000 cataract surgeries which gave vision back to so many Uruguayans, and a high number of other surgical procedures.

Besides, the Hospital provides coverage to the whole country. A total of 187,505 patients have been treated, according to statistics.

Cuba has a second mission in Uruguay dedicated to orthoprosthetics, ranging from making prostheses to shoes and orthopedic inserts.

The specialists in ophthalmology, rooted in the spirit of solidarity towards other peoples, see with regret how much hostile attitudes towards Cuba have affected a larger project such as More Doctors, promoted by then-President Dilma Roussef, and with the help of the Pan American Health Organization.

Castellon argues that once a doctor is outside Cuba, he or she is aware of the benefits that are being provided to their country to cover a series of basic needs caused by the U.S. blockade and those that they will have for themselves, as well as the working conditions for the period of a mission.

For all these reasons, he emphasizes the unacceptability of the amendments to the contract proposed by President Bolsonaro, which seeks to humiliate and discredit Cuban medicine, which has achieved so much during more than 55 years of collaboration in more than 65 countries.