The World Today
MADRID, 16 (EUROPA PRESS)
The United States government has canceled the visas of the wife and ten-year-old daughter of Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilha, following restrictions imposed last Wednesday on visas for officials from African and American countries, including Brazil, for cooperating with Cuban government medical missions. This measure does not affect Padilha because his permits have expired since 2024.
The State Department asserted that individuals involved in the Ministry of Health's Mais Médicos program contributed to a scheme to "export forced labor by the Cuban regime."
Thus, these new restrictions are added to those imposed on two officials who worked at the Brazilian Ministry of Health—Mozart Julio Tabosa Sales and Alberto Kleiman. Padilha has not renewed his visa since 2024, so it is not subject to cancellation, according to Agencia Brasil.
Likewise, the United States revoked visas and imposed restrictions on several former Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) officials and their families "for their complicity in the labor export scheme" under the Mais Médicos program.
U.S. authorities argued that as part of the program, officials used PAHO "as an intermediary with the Cuban dictatorship to implement it without complying with Brazilian constitutional requirements, circumventing U.S. sanctions against Cuba, and knowingly paying the Cuban regime what was owed to medical personnel."
After the announcement, Alexandre Padilha stated that "we will not bow down to those who persecute vaccines, researchers, science, and now two of the key people behind Mais Médicos," referring to officials Sales and Kleiman. He celebrated the fact that in two years, current Brazilian authorities have doubled the number of doctors in this program that "saves lives."
