Cuba said Wednesday it will pull some 11,000 doctors from Brazil, after that country's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro questioned their qualifications and pay, in what was turning into a major diplomatic spat.
In an interview earlier this month, Bolsonaro criticized Cuba's "Mais Medicos" (More Doctors) program, which was launched in 2013 and has sent thousands of Cuban doctors to work in deprived areas of Brazil.
The president-elect, who takes office on January 1, questioned the doctors' training and said they would have to renew their licenses in Brazil.
He also slammed Cuba's management of the five-year-old program, saying the doctors received only a quarter of what Brazil was paying the Cuban government for their services.
Cuba's Health Ministry hit back on Wednesday, calling Bolsonaro's comments "contemptuous and threatening".
Jair Bolsonaro gestures after casting his vote in presidential elections in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 28, 2018. /VCG Photo
"These unacceptable conditions make it impossible to maintain the presence of Cuban professionals in the program," it said in a strongly worded statement.
It added Cuban doctors, currently serving in 67 countries, have brought medical care to areas of "extreme poverty" whether in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, Sao Paulo, Salvador de Bahia or the 34 Special Indigenous Districts, particularly Amazonia.
"More than 700 municipalities were able to count on a doctor for the first time ever," it said.
The planned withdrawal of some 11,420 Cuban doctors now sets relations between the two countries at a new low even before Bolsonaro has officially taken power.
Cuba's "white-coat diplomacy" began under Fidel Castro after the 1959 revolution, and has grown to become the island's most valuable export, bringing in an estimated 11 billion US dollars a year.
Cuban media reported this week that Havana is sending 500 more doctors to crisis-wracked Venezuela.
The More Doctors program was launched in August 2013, and since then nearly 20,000 Cuban doctors have treated 113.5 million Brazilians, according to the Cuban ministry.
On Twitter, Cuban President Manuel Diaz-Canel paid tribute to the doctors' "dignity, deep sensitivity, professionalism, dedication and altruism".
They had "rendered a valuable service to the people of Brazil" and their work "must be respected and defended", he added.
Bolsonaro, however, launched another volley on Twitter. "We made continuity of the More Doctors program conditional on a capacity test, (payment of) full salary to Cuban professionals, most of which is currently going to the dictatorship, and the freedom to bring their families."
"Unfortunately Cuba did not accept," he wrote.
(Cover: A nurse works next to patients at a public hospital in Boa Vista, Roraima state, Brazil, August 22, 2018. /VCG Photo)