By Maria Josefina Arce

In 2023, with the return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency of Brazil, the "More Doctors" program was relaunched, which since its implementation ten years earlier has aimed to make healthcare present throughout the territory of the South American giant.

In revitalizing the initiative, dismantled by his predecessor, the ultra-right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, Lula da Silva affirmed that "More Doctors" is essentially to bring to the most distant corners and the great abandoned peripheries, the citizen's right to be attended by health professionals.

The results of the resumption of the program, born under the mandate of the now former president Dilma Rousseff, of the Workers' Party, are already satisfactory. According to the Ministry of Health, there has been a 105% increase in the number of doctors recruited.

More than 86 million Brazilians benefited last year with the activation of the project, which was extended to more municipalities in the country.

A milestone has been the incorporation of the indigenous districts. Some 977 professionals were added to the health care provided to these peoples, which has been described as an important advance by the Ministry of Health, given the lack of medical care that these communities have suffered in recent years.

Marginalized under the Bolsonaro government, the indigenous peoples were even abandoned during the COVID 19 pandemic. They were never contemplated, denounced at the time by human rights organizations, in the national plans to face the virus.

Even when Bolsonaro's irresponsible stance of encouraging the invasion of indigenous territories for economic activities meant the entry into their communities of the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

In its new format "More Doctors" has brought more opportunities to professionals for qualification and improvement, in addition to incentives and benefits.

Thus, it stipulates an additional payment of 20% to health workers who remain for four years in high vulnerability areas.

The Program will also improve the SUS, the Unified Health System, with investments for the construction of facilities and reforms in the Basic Units.

The resumption of "More Doctors" is a sign of the commitment and will of the government presided by Lula da Silva to guarantee medical care to every Brazilian, especially to those who live in the poorest and most isolated regions of Brazil.