Abstract
The Mais Médicos program was introduced in 2013 with the aim of reducing the shortage of doctors in priority regions and diminishing regional inequalities in health. One of the strategies has been to offer 3-year contracts for doctors to work in primary healthcare services in small towns, inland, rural, remote, and socially vulnerable areas. This report describes the program's implementation and the allocation of doctors to these target areas in 2014. To describe the provision of doctors in the first year of implementation, we compared the doctor-to-population ratio in the 5570 municipalities of Brazil before and after the program, based on the Federal Board of Medicine database (2013), and the official dataset provided by the Ministry of Health (2014). In its first public call (July 2013) 3511 municipalities joined the Mais Médicos program, requesting a total of 15 460 doctors; although the program prioritizes the recruitment of Brazilians, only 1096 nationals enrolled and were hired, together with 522 foreign doctors. As a consequence, an international cooperation agreement was set in place to recruit Cuban doctors. In 12 months the program recruited 14 462 doctors: 79.0% Cubans, 15.9% Brazilians and 5.1% of other nationalities, covering 93.5% of the doctors demanded; they were assigned to all the 3785 municipalities enrolled. The study reveals a major decrease in the number of municipalities with fewer than 0.1 doctors per thousand inhabitants, which dropped from 374 in 2013 to 95 in 2014 (75% reduction). Of the total, 294 doctors were sent to work in the country's 34 Indigenous Health Districts (100% coverage) and 3390 doctors were deployed in municipalities containing certified rural maroon communities (formed centuries ago by runaway slaves). After 1 year of implementation, the municipalities with maroon communities with less than 0.1 doctors per thousand inhabitants were reduced by 87% in the poorest north region. More than 30% of municipalities with maroon communities in the richest regions had more than 1.0 doctors per thousand inhabitants, whereas in the poorest regions fewer than 7% of municipalities reached that level. The Mais Médicos program has granted medical assistance to these historically overlooked populations. However, it is important to evaluate the mid- and long-term sustainability of this initiative.
Highlights
The Mais Médicos program was introduced in 2013 with the aim of reducing the shortage of doctors in priority regions and diminishing regional inequalities in health
International experience shows that access to and uptake of health services is dependent on health equity strategies, whereby efforts are made to recruit and retain professionals in more vulnerable areas to provide their populations with health care[1,2,3,4]
The program prioritizes the recruitment of Brazilian professionals, only 1096 doctors registered in Brazil enrolled and were hired, while another 522 places were taken by physicians who had trained abroad, together filling 10.5% of the vacancies
Summary
The Mais Médicos program was introduced in 2013 with the aim of reducing the shortage of doctors in priority regions and diminishing regional inequalities in health. One of the strategies has been to offer 3-year contracts for doctors to work in primary healthcare services in small towns, inland, rural, remote, and socially vulnerable areas. To address the problem of the unequal geographical distribution of health workers, several countries have adopted specific policies designed to attract and retain these professionals, doctors included, in rural and/or remote areas. International experience shows that access to and uptake of health services is dependent on health equity strategies, whereby efforts are made to recruit and retain professionals in more vulnerable areas to provide their populations with health care[1,2,3,4]. In Colombia in particular, universities are important actors in this process, since the new university curriculum has made this social service – better known as 'the rural year' (el año rural) – a prerequisite for obtaining a medical license
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