In his speech, Villas-Boas reiterated that before the implementation of the program More Doctors in July 2013, “we had difficulties to bring health care to distant regions in the interior of the country, even to indigenous communities”.
The program has in Bahia 1,432 doctors, 1,064 of them are from Cuba and work in 340 municipalities to offer 74 percent of health care in that northeastern state, where some 687,360 health visits take place monthly.
In that regard, Governor Costa praised the work carried out by Cuban doctors and thanked the Cuban people for the cooperation given to the Brazilian population and said that this help goes beyond the health field.
The ceremony was also attended by Luis Wong, coordinator from the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) in Bahia, senator Lidice da Mata and federal parliamentarians Jorge Solla and Alice Portugal.
Considered by the United Nations organization as a significant implementation for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, the program More Doctors is carried out in 4,058 municipalities and 34 Indigenous Special Health Districts in the whole country.
The program, implemented on July 8th, 2013 following the initiative of President Dilma Rousseff, has currently 18,240 doctors, including more than 11,000 Cuban specialists, to provide 63 million people with health care.
