We need good doctors, not bad ones.
Instead of calling the Federal Police, why doesn't the Federal Council of Medicine help find professionals who will accept the realities of Brazil, the peripheries and remote areas, for salaries of R$ 10?
The public war between medical professionals, students, and their organizations against the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) program has become radicalized and irreversible. The escalation occurred with the Federal Council of Medicine's request for Federal Police intervention in the investigation of the approximately 16 officially announced participants. This was the furious response from the category's leadership to the position of the ministers Aluizio Mercadante and Alexandre Padilha. On Wednesday the 31st, the heads of Education and Health formally backed down, but without abandoning the idea of requiring students to complete an additional two years of residency before graduating, starting in 2018.
The maneuver, which was supposed to be brilliant, prompted, the following day, a formal request from the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine) for an investigation also at the Attorney General's Office regarding the sign-ups for the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) program. The suspicion is serious: fraud in the list of signatures to make room for the hiring of foreign doctors.
Has the government really reached this point? Committed the blunder of the year—low, vile, illegal, fraudulent, etc.—to hire what were initially supposed to be Cuban doctors and then turned out to be Spanish and Portuguese? To create thousands of loopholes in a public relationship, easily monitored, for its sinister ideological project? One can believe it if one wishes. But, in the reflection of this situation, what one sees is the collapse of the level of dialogue proposed, albeit in an extremely disorganized manner, by the government.
Calling in the Federal Police at this point in the events is like introducing an extreme external figure into a discussion where one could still have a conversation. Why didn't the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine), before making headlines with its publicity stunt, request a review of the case? Because it could have been successful? Since the Federal Police have already been called in, why discuss it further? It's better to let the police do their job.
Looking rationally at the chaos surrounding the Mais Médicos program has also been impossible for the government. The program was launched without prior explanation to society. A great set of ideas, based on two main pillars – improving the quality of medical courses, including by increasing their duration, and populating more than 10 Brazilian municipalities, eager to welcome them with open arms, with doctors earning salaries of R$ 3 – is ending up in the trash can. Between presentation errors, formal backtracks, and the legal obstructions that may now be created in the spheres of the Attorney General's Office and the Federal Police, in two months what we have is a shooting star: it appeared and is disappearing after a short trajectory.
If the government's guilt is not proven in any instance of fraud in the list of participants in the Mais Médicos program, however, the Federal Council of Medicine will have removed its mask. The same economic body that punishes medical errors, emblematic of the corporatism of a professional elite, will once again demarcate the field it occupies. Instead of helping to find the good doctors who should, like Hippocrates, accept the challenge of practicing popular medicine, the CFM will have led the team of bad doctors. Those who turn their backs on the real Brazil, excluding both the peripheries of large cities and the most needy municipalities from their area of operation, and tarnishing the white coats they wear with prejudice. Unfortunately, there is no doubt, given their stance, which side this leadership is on.