Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.- “I owe a great debt to Cuba, a country that has always shown solidarity with Brazil,” said Dilma Rousseff, the first woman elected President in the history of the South American giant in 2010.

In the context of the Seventeenth BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Rousseff met with President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, where they discussed their commitment to continue promoting South-South and Triangular Cooperation, according to the Cuban president’s social media account.

The prominent Brazilian politician and economist assumed the Presidency of the BRICS Development Bank in 2023.

A lover of the Cuban people and knowledgeable about its history, Rousseff expressed her heartfelt gratitude to Fidel. During the conversation, the former Brazilian president recalled the extraordinary contribution of Cuban doctors during their several years of work in her country, earning the respect and admiration of all its people by bringing healthcare to remote areas and urban peripheries in Brazil.

“I owe it to Fidel and Raúl, to Miguel and the Cuban people that my country had basic, primary healthcare, fundamental public health during my administration.”

She recalled that in her country, “we didn’t have enough doctors. Cuban doctors came to Brazil and were very well received. Why? The Cuban doctors’ motivation was not only focused on the illness but on the human being.”

“For Cuban doctors, illness is not seen as a problem,” she added, “but as a reason to understand each person and know how to treat them.”

Dilma speaks, looking straight into one’s eyes, as if she wanted to relive those moments within them. “Today, if Brazil has another primary health condition, we owe it to Cuba,” she noted.

She expressed that “not only because doctors were essential for a time, but also because they left a model of medical behavior that treats the patient, recognizing them as a human being, who must understand their medical history; the doctor must have physical contact and humanity.”

With pride and also great gratitude, she states that “only a people like the Cubans, with Cuba’s political history, have the conditions to create a medicine, a health behavior that is focused on the human being. They (the doctors) treat all people.”

She recalled how “at many times, municipalities in the interior of the country wanted to elect Cuban doctors as mayors or deputies, because they represented them.”

Almost at the end of her remarks, former Brazilian president and current President of the BRICS Development Bank, Dilma Rousseff, expressed: “My message to the Cuban people is one of immense gratitude.”

Dilma Rousseff, former Brazilian president and current President of the BRICS Development Bank, sent a message of gratitude to the people of Cuba, after recalling the extraordinary contribution to the health of our country’s doctors during her presidency.