Havana, Cuba.- Public Health Minister of Cuba, José Ángel Portal, explained today the motives that led the island to conclude its participation in the program Mais Medicos of Brazil.

Cuba took a painful, but necessary decision, he said. Our country did not want the present situation, but acts in defense of the professional and human dignity of our doctors and their security, said Portal in an interview with Cubadebate.

According to the Minister of Public Health, nothing of what has been done until now has been hasty and Cuba understands that the decision -taken after the despective and aggressive expressions of the president elect, Jair Bolsonaro- has an impact on the Brazilian people.

Different from others, we have always considered health attention as an issue of top priority, further than any other consideration of political nature, he added.

Portal explained that for the Caribbean island the health of a people is beyond politics and recalled that in 2009, during the coup d’état in Honduras against the then president Manuel Zelaya, near 400 Cuban doctors remained in that nation in very difficult conditions.

What cannot be permitted in any case, what is painful in Brazil, is that the renowned prestige of the Cuban health school be put in doubt.

We also cannot tolerate ill-intended offers that look to make our medical cooperators abandon their mission.

According to Portal ‘this is the first time in 55 years of cooperation, sduring which time over 600 thousand Cubans have rendered their services in more than 160 countries, that we are put in such a situation as this’.

Last Wednesday, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health announced the decisuion to discontinue participating in the program Mais Medicos iof Brazil, after the conditions and threats made by the president-elect.