[The development of the medical school in Brazil]

Abstract

Since its beginnings in 1808, medical instruction in Brazil has evolved and changed as Brazilian society has done. Medical schools, at first a concern of government alone, between 1931 and 1960 began to attract private enterprise, which established six of the 19 schools founded during those years. Since then the share of the private sector has grown, and there was a veritable explosion between 1966 and 1970, when 30 new medical schools were set up, 25 of them in the private sector (more than half of the total of 76 schools in operation today are in the private sector). The authors note that the increase in the number of medical schools and courses has not made them less selective, diminished the importance of the government-operated schools--which are still the leading institutions--or made it more certain that the education imparted in the private schools is of satisfactory quality. The medical schools are clustered chiefly in the southeast, and they are partial to the industrial urban setting, especially the Rio-São Paulo axis (where half of the country's physicians are concentrated), which makes for yet another severe imbalance among regions.