Over 24,000 physicians working in Brazil

Havana, July 18 (RHC)-- A total of 24,894 Cuban professionals from the More Doctors program are working throughout Brazil today to reduce health inequalities and provide care in vulnerable and extremely poor areas.

Official sources confirm that this number has increased by 93.83 percent since the beginning of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration (January 2023 to June 2024).

The state-owned Agência Brasil indicates that this number of doctors represents 12.51 thousand more than the number registered in December 2022.

At that time, only 12,843 were active. Since 2023, with the restructuring of the program, the federal government has almost doubled the number of professionals and implemented improvements.

In early July, the Ministry of Health announced a new advertisement for the recruitment of 3.1 thousand clinicians and specialists in medicine.

The selection brings, in an unprecedented way, vacancies in the quota regime for people with disabilities and ethnic-racial groups, such as blacks, quilombolas (Afro-Brazilians) and indigenous people.

"More doctors is a reality and it is making a difference. When we took office, there were 12,000 doctors. With this decree, we have resumed the goal of 28 thousand," said Health Minister Nísia Trindade.

She pointed out that this is the first time that the decree has been issued according to the quota policy, which is a priority of the federal government. "We are fulfilling our vision of inclusion," said Trindade.

More Doctors is a series of actions and initiatives by the public authorities to strengthen primary health care, the privileged entry point of the National Unified Health System, where 80% of health problems are solved.

The news media assures that Más Médicos also exists to face another problem: regional inequalities.

Created in 2013 during the government of President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), More Doctors proposed to increase its number of members to provide care, mainly in small cities in the interior of the South American giant. The doctors came from several countries, including Cuba, which on November 14, 2019, reaffirmed the solidarity and humanist vocation demonstrated by its health workers in dozens of countries, when it announced the departure of the program, given the conditions and derogatory statements of the then elected ruler Jair Bolsonaro about its professionals. In 2019, the former military president replaced More Doctors with Doctors for Brazil.

As part of More Doctors, detailed on that occasion the Cuban Ministry of Public Health in a statement, in the last five years about 20 thousand Cuban collaborators attended 113 million 359 thousand patients in about 3,600 municipalities, "reaching a universe of up to 60 million Brazilians". (Source: Prensa Latina)