RIO DE JANEIRO. –"My message to the Cuban people is one of immense gratitude," said Dilma Rousseff, current president of the New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS Group, to the press team of the Presidency of the Republic of Cuba.
An economist by profession and former president of Brazil, Dilma held a meeting with Cuban Head of State Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez in the context of the 17th BRICS Summit. At the end of the meeting, the special friend—who was elected in March 2023 to her current position and ratified in 2025—shared a message with journalists for the people of the largest of the Antilles.
"I have a great debt to Cuba. A debt to a country that has always been supportive of Brazil, that has been supportive of the Brazilian people in a very sensitive area, which is public health," Dilma said.
She said she felt indebted to Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro, to comrade Raúl, to President Díaz-Canel, and to the Cuban people. The reason? During her administration, the South American giant had "primary health care, which is fundamental basic health care."
"We didn't have enough doctors," she said. "The Cuban doctors arrived in Brazil and were very well received, totally, because the Cuban doctor model is a direct and personal relationship, in which illness is seen not as a problem, but as a way to understand how to treat the person."
Dilma stated that "today, if Brazil has a different primary healthcare system, we owe it to Cuba, because for a time Cuban doctors were essential. They left behind a model of medical conduct, in which the patient is treated by recognizing the human being whose medical history must be understood."
Rousseff argued that, in addition to having physical contact with patients, professionals on the island lavish humanistic care on the sick: "And only a people like Cuba, with all of Cuba's political history, is capable of creating a form of medicine, a form of health care that is centered on the human being and not on the disease.
"They treat everyone," the dignitary acknowledged with admiration.
She shared with reporters the beautiful anecdote that "on many occasions, in my country, in the municipalities in the interior of Brazil, they wanted to elect Cuban doctors as mayors and deputies, because (the people felt that) they represented them."
