CIENFUEGOS, June 23 (Dr. Sunset Nogueras Rofes) – A popular radio call-in show here threatened to go off-course politically when a number of physicians called questioning the government’s policy toward the emigration of health professionals.
The program, aired on June 21 at 11 a.m., announced as its topic for discussion Law 113, which sanctions health workers for various transgressions. The problem became that approximately 50% of the callers wanted the discuss the punitive aspects of an unrelated Health Ministry regulation
concerning health professionals who want to leave the country.
Health Ministry Regulation 54 stipulates that health professionals, which includes doctors, nurses and technicians, who apply to leave the country have to "serve" the government for 3 to 5 years, presumably to pay it back for their education. In practice, this means that potential
emigrants are reassigned to the least desirable jobs and remote locations within the health system. Many here see these measures as punishment meted out to those who apply to emigrate.
During the radio program, some calls were interrupted or disconnected for no apparent reason. Its moderator, Fabio Bosch, said at one point "internal regulations of the Ministry of Health dealing with the emigration of physicians is not the topic of our program." Later he asked
listeners not to call to talk about emigration.
After the program, in a telephone interview, Bosch allowed that he understood that the Ministry regulation was punitive in nature.
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