Created in 2013 in an effort to democratize access to healthcare, Brazil’s Mais Médicos Program included a series of measures towards achieving this goal. One of the most notorious was bringing in foreign doctors to settle in the country. A lesser known initiative was its regulation of new medical schools. Later on, this was transformed into a five-year embargo – from 2018 until 2023 – so as to “review and equalize” the availability of doctors, which is extremely uneven across Brazil.
The practical result of this equation, however, was not an equal number of doctors in each Brazilian state. According to recent data from Brazil’s National Association of Private Universities (Associação Nacional das Universidades Particulares/ANUP), there are at least 180 lawsuits in progress by educational institutions seeking authorization to establish medical schools in Brazil.
To lawyer Ana Claudia Rodrigues – an associate at Barcellos Tucunduva Advogados who specializes in Educational Law and Management – the embargo is legal, “since it is the result of a provision in the Mais Médicos Law” – but she is also critical of its effectiveness and of the interests that may be behind it.
"In my view, the issue here is bigger and goes through aspects related to convenience and purpose. After almost 10 years, what we see is that this intention has not materialised."
Ana Claudia also states that there is no similar measure prohibiting the new courses in any other field of knowledge. "There is nothing similar in Brazil."
The Brazilian Federal Medicine Council (Conselho Federal de Medicina/CFM) has long lobbied against the “unbridled” establishment of medical schools. This idea has found support because of the poor quality of these new schools, and because many of them are concentrated in regions that already have many more doctors per thousand inhabitants – as is the case of the Brazilian Southeast.
“To begin with, the current system that authorizes new medical schools does not include standards of quality. Moreover, restricting new vacancies does not guarantee that only excellent schools are authorized, in the same way that restricting authorization to regions where there are fewer doctors does not guarantee that students trained in that region will remain there," she concludes.
Source: Portal Migalhas
