Mais Médicos program: provision of medical doctors in rural, remote and socially vulnerable areas of Brazil, 2013–2014

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The Mais Médicos program was introduced in 2013 with the aim of reducing the shortage of doctors in priorityregions and diminishing regional inequalities in health. One of the strategies has been to offer 3-year contracts for doctors to work inprimary healthcare services in small towns, inland, rural, remote, and socially vulnerable areas. This report describes the program’simplementation and the allocation of doctors to these target areas in 2014.Methods: To describe the provision of doctors in the first year of implementation, we compared the doctor-to-population ratio inthe 5570 municipalities of Brazil before and after the program, based on the Federal Board of Medicine database (2013), and theofficial dataset provided by the Ministry of Health (2014).Results: In its first public call (July 2013) 3511 municipalities joined the Mais Médicos program, requesting a total of15 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 Cubandoctors. 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...