During a lengthy speech for National Health Day, an event held in São Paulo in defense of the Unified Health System (SUS, in Spanish), Lula promised to “recover and expand More Doctors program in order to guarantee all Brazilians to have access to a full family health care”.
Such an initiative was supported by Cuba, but on November 14, 2018, Cuba’s authorities decided not to continue to support the Program in face of questions and disparaging statements by then-President-elect Jair Bolsonaro against Cuban health professionals.
As part of More Doctors Program, Cuba´s Public Health Ministry (MINSAP, in Spanish) said, as many as 20,000 Cuban health collaborators treated about 113,359,000 patients in some 3,600 municipalities in the last five years, “reaching up to 60 million Brazilians”.
Also in his speech, Lula vowed “to rebuild the Popular Pharmacy, strengthen SAMU (Mobile Emergency Care Service) and UPAs (Rapid Care Unit)”.
He said “Brazilians with mental disorders will be treated freely, with dignity, in accordance with the psychiatric reform´s principles.”
Likewise, the former worker leader condemned Bolsonaro in his speech for dismantling Brazil´s public health and mismanaging the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The worsening of living conditions caused by current Brazilian president is a really sad reality. Going back to victorious public policies we´ve long before rolled out is an emergency that cannot be postponed,” Lula said.
Lula condemned that “over 33 million Brazilians go hungry every single day. The sacred three daily meals we guaranteed in our government no longer reach 125 million people.”
To Lula, “Bolsonaro´s irresponsibility has no bounds. He mismanaged the pandemic criminally, for which he is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of more than 678,000 deaths from Covid-19.”
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