"Did you see what you did?", Dilma says to Bolsonaro, regarding the expulsion of Cuban doctors celebrated in Italy.

Dilma.com.br - The landing of a brigade of Cuban doctors this Sunday in the Lombardy region of Italy.This is a strong act of cooperation and solidarity between nations. Italy, although one of the richest countries in the world, is currently the one that has lost the most lives to COVID-19. Italians celebrated the Cuban humanitarian support with applause.

The medical brigade that arrived in Italy continues the systematic healthcare assistance that Cuba has been providing to Nicaragua, Jamaica, Suriname, Venezuela, and Grenada. These brigades reaffirm that the path to victory over the pandemic necessarily involves cooperation and solidarity among nations.

The people and government of Cuba are an example to those in power who succumb to petty attitudes and lies, disdain the gravity of the crisis with irresponsibly aggressive and diversionary behavior, and refuse to step down from the podium even when the world is experiencing its greatest tragedy in decades.

Bolsonaro, in his irresponsible ignorance, has already treated Cuban doctors with the same shortsightedness and ideological prejudice that he applied to the Chinese last week, leading him to call the coronavirus a "little flu."

In 55 years, Cuba has carried out 600 internationalist missions in 164 countries, involving 400 health professionals. Among other actions, it fought Ebola in West Africa, treated blindness in Latin America and the Caribbean, confronted cholera in Haiti, and sent 26 rescue and relief brigades to countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Venezuela in the face of major disasters and epidemics. Most of these missions were sponsored by the Cuban government, which also offered training courses to 35.613 doctors from 138 countries.

These international initiatives reflect the humanist and solidarity-based vocation of the Cuban people, which is why their doctors are internationally recognized, providing services in approximately 70 countries.

In Brazil, Cuban doctors were central to the success of the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) program, strengthening the SUS (Unified Health System) and addressing the shortage of Brazilian professionals in serving the poor and most vulnerable population. With over 18.000 doctors, the Mais Médicos program served 63 million Brazilians. A significant portion of this work was done by the more than 11.000 Cuban doctors who formed the core of the program.

The Mais Médicos program provided tens of millions of medical consultations in over 4.058 municipalities, primarily in metropolitan areas, favelas, peripheral areas, inland cities, quilombola communities, and indigenous reserves. The Cuban doctors helped us make it possible, for the first time in history, to have a doctor in 700 municipalities that had never before had a single professional in this field.

In Brazil, the presence of Cuban doctors would now be even more strategic, given the need to combat the coronavirus and strengthen primary healthcare. However, this public health partnership, so fundamental to the country, did not survive the rise of Bolsonaro's far-right government, which was always more concerned with spreading lies against non-existent "ideological enemies" than with dedicating itself to the health care of the population.

Disrespected by Bolsonaro and so infamously harassed by his fanatical followers, the Cuban doctors were, however, loved by their patients.

Bolsonaro insulted them so much that the Cuban government felt obliged to recall them and end their participation in the program. The Cuban Foreign Ministry reacted: "It is unacceptable to question the dignity, professionalism, and altruism of our doctors."

And so, through offense and slander, Bolsonaro has expelled thousands of healthcare professionals from Brazil who would be extremely important at this moment when the coronavirus is beginning to spread throughout our territory. He subjects tens of millions of Brazilians to helplessness and the absolute impossibility of consulting a doctor at a time of serious crisis and great fear and disorientation. The same doctors who, this Sunday, are warmly received by the government and people of Italy. The same doctors whom countries around the world recognize as qualified and competent. The least that could be said now to the unprepared and crude president who pretends to govern Brazil is: "Did you see what you did?"