Academic mobility between Portuguese-speaking countries is still a goal to be achieved, with Cape Verde and Brazil more advanced in this area and others less developed, such as East Timor, said the president of the Lusophone Health Sciences Academic Network.

Jorge Conde, president of the Rede Académica das Ciências da Saúde da Lusofonia (RACS - Academic Network of Lusophone Health Sciences), was speaking to Lusa about the organization's latest meeting, which took place in São Vicente and discussed the different realities of Portuguese-speaking countries in this area.

The president of the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra also pointed out that the goal of higher education in the health sciences in Portuguese-speaking countries being recognized in all of them is not yet a reality.

But he was optimistic: "We're getting closer and closer to being a real health community".

"We are very used to working to European standards and when we mix Brazilians, Timorese and Africans, things change context," he said, indicating that the main purpose of RACS is to "reach a level" where students who graduate from CPLP institutions "can move freely" in Lusophone establishments.

This mobility is not yet fully felt, not least because there are professions that only exist in some of the states and even then with different teaching standards.

"We have a number of health professions in Portugal that don't exist in any other country and professions that exist in Brazil that no other country has," he explained.

He added: "Mobility from Portugal to other countries can be relatively easy, because we'll be at a slightly more advanced level, with more content than in other countries, but the opposite isn't true and we know that these mobility issues are very much based on reciprocity."

"As long as this reciprocity isn't possible, mobility will always be difficult," he said.

The greatest difficulties are felt in East Timor, not only because it is at a clearly different stage of development from the other countries, but also because it only has one recent RACS member.

In addition, he said, the difficulties are also due to the lack of use of the Portuguese language.

Angola and Mozambique, for example, have some areas linked to health that are not yet higher education or that are and coexist with non-higher education, which raises some questions about recognition, he continued.

But in Cape Verde, on the other hand, Portuguese students are already studying on the Erasmus program.

According to Jorge Conde, there are still more people traveling to Portugal, but the big problem is longer stays, which require a visa in addition to a tourist visa.

"We still have a lot of difficulty with mobility within the CPLP because it's still difficult to obtain visas when you're staying for a long period of time," he said, recalling that "the network is very much based on this idea of mobility".

He gave the example of the institution he chairs, which has been waiting for three months for two students from Cape Verde, a country from which mobility is supposedly less difficult.

"We have many Brazilian students who enroll in Portugal and then drop out after a month or two because they can't get a visa and the school year has already started," he said.

RACS is an organization of higher education institutions in the field of health from seven Portuguese-speaking countries - Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor.

The aim of the network is to promote training and scientific cooperation in the area of health in the Portuguese-speaking area. It has half a hundred effective members and partner entities and a universe of more than 90,000 students and 4,500 teachers. (Expresso da Ilhas)