Opinion – Julio Abramczyk: Indigenous people are now studying medicine

In the past, volunteer doctors cared for sick indigenous people in their villages. Soon, there will be a large number of doctors who were born in the villages.

As in 2019 the quota law facilitated the access of indigenous people to the medical course of federal universities, after the completion of high school courses, Willian Fernandes Luna and collaborators from the Federal University of São Carlos studied and reported in Interface magazine the experience of these peoples in these areas. courses.

The survey identified 192 indigenous students in 43 medical schools from a total of 69 federal universities, with 80 medical courses in 2019.

The courses sought were created in 2013 with the incentive of the Mais Médicos program and were implemented in regions with no public medical schools.

Interviewed by the authors, the indigenous medical students mentioned that their new knowledge can provide direct impacts on their communities.

On the other hand, the presence of indigenous people in medical schools can bring diversity, like other ways of thinking about the health-disease process.

The authors conclude that institutional support needs to be improved to favor indigenous medical education and training.