Primary health care in the Algarve and Alentejo, but also in Lisbon and the Tagus Valley, is the destination of the 200 to 300 doctors from Latin America that the Government intends to hire, the Minister of Health announced today.
Manuel Pizarro, who was heard today, Wednesday, at the Parliamentary Health Commission, at the request of the Liberal Initiative (IL), on hiring Cuban doctors, guaranteed that these professionals “will have the degree recognized by a Portuguese university and will be enrolled in the Order of Physicians”.
Asked by IL MP Joana Cordeiro about the fact that Cuban doctors hired through a Cuban state recruitment company receive only a small part of the salary paid by the Portuguese State, Pizarro replied that “there are hundreds of companies of this kind operating in Portugal” and that the Government does not control what they pay doctors.
Underlining that "hiring doctors of various nationalities for the SNS is a normality", he said that there are 1.729 internal doctors and foreign specialists in the public health service and revealed that the doctors that are now intended to be hired in Latin America will be for a period of three years. .
He recalled that these hirings of doctors from Latin America have been taking place since 2009 – when he was Secretary of State – and recalled that there are currently 58 Cuban doctors in Portugal working in the public service under a direct contract, “which was probably only possible because they initially came under that first agreement”.
On the fulfillment of human rights by the Cuban regime, he defended that "all over the world human rights must be scrupulously respected" and that, at the institutional level, the Portuguese State "has old and consolidated relations with Cuba".
“We were one of the first countries in the world to recognize Cuba's independence”, recalled the minister, stressing that Portugal has “a critical position regarding the US blockade”.
On hiring Cuban doctors, he recalled that it was a process that went well and resulted in a full integration of these professionals and gave the example of a Cuban doctor who arrived in 2009, did his specialty in Portugal and is now the director of a health center.
These professionals “come with excellent academic training”, he insisted, recalling that it is “necessary and useful” for the country to hire foreign doctors, “in a limited contingent and for limited periods of time”.
He also said that these 200 to 300 doctors (the exact number has not been defined or the exact places where they will work) will respond to the needs of SNS users in locations where there is great difficulty in hiring.
"It's already been tested, it worked well and there's no good reason why it shouldn't be repeated," he added.
Earlier this month, the Council of Ministers approved a decree-law that changes the legal regime for the recognition of academic degrees and higher education diplomas awarded by foreign higher education institutions.
According to the Government, this diploma provides for an exceptional regime of recognition of the academic degree conferred by foreign higher education institutions to doctors who come to work for the SNS.
This approval has already deserved a reaction from the Order of Doctors, with the chairman, Carlos Cortes, warning that he will be against “any process of facilitation” that does not respect a “very rigorous assessment” of the qualifications of foreign doctors who intend to work in Portugal.
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