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LatinNews Daily - 12 March 2026
In brief: Brazil’s top court approves reincorporation of some Cuban doctors
*Brazil’s supreme court (STF) has approved a set of rules and criteria allowing for the reinstatement of Cuban doctors who were dismissed in 2018 from their placements in Brazil’s Mais Médicos healthcare access and training programme. First launched in 2013 under former president Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), Mais Médicos is an initiative that aims to send more doctors to provide healthcare services in poorer, peripheral parts of the country, and the programme gave many job placements in Brazilian clinics to Cuban doctors. However, in 2018, Cuba unilaterally terminated the Mais Médicos agreement with Brazil, which resulted in the immediate dismissal of Cuban doctors from the programme. The following year, Brazil’s congress passed a bill allowing for the “temporary and exceptional reinstatement” of Cuban doctors who fulfilled certain criteria, such as being able to prove that their contracts were terminated as a direct result of Cuba’s 2018 termination of the agreement. This 2019 bill then faced legal challenges, with the national association of foreign-trained doctors (Aspromed) arguing that the bill was unconstitutional by making an “undue distinction” discriminating between Cuban doctors depending on the date and reason of their dismissal. Aspromed wanted looser criteria and for more Cuban doctors to be allowed to work in Brazil, but the STF has now upheld the 2019 law which only permits the reinstatement of some Cuban doctors in Mais Médicos. The STF ruling comes as various countries are ending their participation in Cuba’s medical workers’ programme, which provides Havana with crucial revenue, under pressure from the US administration led by President Donald Trump. In August the US also imposed visa restrictions on Brazilian government officials in relation to the Mais Médicos scheme.
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