Photo: Cuban Doctors (File).
The salary of Cuban doctors in Honduras could cost the state between $2,000 and $3,000 per person. This has sparked controversy.
Several representatives of the country’s medical association have assured that the 86 doctors would earn millions in indirect payments, which would mainly benefit the Cuban government.
“The country has quite a lot of doctors, what is needed is that they get permanent contracts to fill the basic specialized positions that the population needs,” Suyapa Figueroa, a Honduran doctor, told La Prensa newspaper.
For his part, doctor and MP Carlos Umaña questioned on Twitter that “bringing GPs is a setback, these places must be for Hondurans who can go anywhere without problems.”
With that in mind, he assured that aid should focus on getting experienced doctors into specific areas, as the country does not guarantee that its own doctors can travel abroad to specialize.
Cuban doctors in Honduras
In this regard, Honduran Health Minister José Manuel Matheu has publicly denied that Cuban doctors will receive the above number:
“It surprises me that the medical college knows how much Cuban doctors are going to make and we don’t. I don’t know where they got that from, we don’t care because we don’t have a budget for it, only the Cuban doctor.”
Matheu assured the country’s press that the salary of Cuban doctors is not set by the Ministry of Health, that they may receive $1,000 and that they are only paid for 12 months, including the guards.
The health minister also insisted the doctors hired will be specialists in response to the college’s concerns about unemployed doctors in Honduras belonging to the general field.
He also pointed to the lack of surgeons and gynecologists in the region, a situation that the arrival of Cubans is making up for.