Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defended the program "More Doctors" of the Brazilian governmment and criticized statements of local professionals against the arrival of foreign doctors to the country.

I believe that a group of persons full of hate protest against doctors from other countries that made us a favor by coming to Brazil to cover places to which Brazilian doctors do not want to go, highlighted Lula in a speech marking 30 years of the foundation of the tradeunion Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT).

These professionals had the greatness "the humanitarian attitude" of opting to work in the most isolated regions of the country, he asserted.

"Nobody is saying they come to Avenida Paulista (city of Sao Paulo) or Copacabana beach (Rio de Janeiro). We are hiring these doctors to come work here to go to the places where Brazilian doctors do not want to go", he stressed.

At this moment 644 doctors, of which 400 are Cubans, receive classes on the public health system and Portuguese language in public universities and on September 16, they will be sent to the places where they will work.

Joint Secretary of Work and Education Management of the Ministry of Health, Fernando Menezes, extolled that foreign specialists will go to 701 municipalities lacking doctors, in territories with low Human Development Index

and whose minority and most of the population live in extreme poverty.

The group of foreign specialists will join another group of one thousand 096 doctors graduated in Brazil who responded to the call of the federal government.

The program "More Doctors", launched by president Dilma Rousseff last July, emerges from the will of the government to guarantee health and life to all Brazilians, and as a country of big territory, it was necessary to ask for international support to carry out the gigantic task, Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha said in recent days.