José Manuel Silva, president of Portugal’s “Ordem dos Médicos” (doctors’ association), stirred up controversy earlier this week when he questioned the government’s hiring of Cuban doctors.
Speaking to TSF radio station, Silva asked why the Ministry of Health pays Cuban doctors “three times more” than their Portuguese colleagues and declared the country would be better off hiring “Portuguese retired doctors” who are of “better quality”.
Outraged reactions were quick to come from the Cuban Ambassador to Portugal Johana Tablada and the Algarve mayor Luís Gomes, who both considered the statements “disrespectful and irrational”.
José Manuel Silva’s remarks were prompted by a report in Jornal i which showed that €12 million had been spent to woo Cuban doctors to this country over the last six years.
Said the newspaper, Portugal paid each doctor €5,900 a month in the first year alone – a sum “far in excess of that usually paid by the State for a baseline salary”.
Thus Silva went public in an interview with TSF radio station: “While Portuguese specialists continue to emigrate because they are paid €8 per hour, Cuban general practitioners are earning three times more than that,” he claimed.
He also questioned the fact that part of the Cuban doctors’ salaries is sent back to Cuba considering this practice “politically, ethically and humanely unacceptable”.
Silva added that the doctors’ association “does not understand how the government would agree to a deal in which doctors are used as a form of merchandise for export by the Cuban government”.
Advising the Ministry of Health to hire “retired doctors, who have a specialty, are of higher quality, do not have language and cultural barriers and can communicate with their patients and vice-versa” instead, he suggested this alternative would also be “cheaper”.
His outburst didn’t sit well with the Cuban Ambassador.
“For some obscure and unclear reason, Mr Silva seems to bring this up for reasons that have nothing to do with the welfare of the Portuguese and Cuban people, while ignoring the history of medical agreements between the two countries,” said Johana Tablana.
The ambassador stressed that, since 2009, over one million medical consultations have been provided in the country by Cuban doctors.
Silva’s “words do not reflect the true state of the relationship between Cuba and Portugal’s institutions, health professionals and people,” she added.
Tablana also addressed the fact that part of the doctors’ salaries is sent back to Cuba, explaining that it goes towards providing “free and universal health care” to doctors working here in Portugal and their families.
Vila Real mayor Luís Gomes threw in his own opinions, condemning Silva for what he termed his “distasteful” words – especially taking into account that “Cuban doctors are taking jobs in areas where the Portuguese do not want to be”.
Gomes also questions why the president of the medical association failed to mention the still “unfilled doctor posts” in the Algarve, as well as the government’s deals with “temporary work agencies” which provide the national health services with doctors “at exorbitant prices and unquantified results”.
As VRSA is a municipality that has had its fair share of Cuban doctors, the mayor was quick to vouch for their professional qualities.
“I can attest to the high quality of the doctors and the satisfaction of their patients, which has even prompted other politicians and towns to request more of these health professionals,” he stressed.
The municipality has been developing a close relationship with Cuba in these past years, especially in terms of medicine, he added.
Coming into the fray, health minister Paulo Macedo said Cuban doctors received salaries “perfectly compatible” with Portuguese doctors and that the government may actually hire more in the immediate future to make up for the shortage of homegrown medics.
Nonetheless, he stressed that “as soon as Portugal as enough doctors” of its own, the agreement with Cuba will cease.
Meantime, the government was working on ways of bringing retired doctors back to the service, and planning to boost nursing quotas by “some hundreds”.
Macedo was talking as nurses throughout the country rallied for Friday’s strike action that has been causing long delays, particularly in hospitals and health units of the Algarve.
