Using parameters of the World Health Organization, the Dominican Republic has more physicians that it needs. The WHO established in 2013 that there should be 25 physicians per 10,000, or 25,000 for the population of 10 million in the country. In his talk “Post Graduate Education at Cedimat” as part of the 16th Juan Manuel Taveras Rodríguez Scientific Conference at the Center for Diagnostics, Advanced Medicine and Telemedicine (Cedimat), Marte said that already in 2013 there were around 15,400 working physicians in the Dominican Republic. But around 40,000 students are studying medicine, and the country’s 10 medicine schools are turning out 4,000 doctors a year.
Marte called for controls on the quality and quantity of physicians the medical schools are graduating because the country could be on the verge of a situation of having more physicians than it needs. He says the physicians will graduate only to find themselves not being able to find jobs.
Marte called for the government, which is the principal entity responsible for the health, education, quality of life of the Dominican people, and the leading funder of the system, to play a more proactive role in the process. He also called for a more active role by the university, medical societies and the Dominican Medical Guild (CMD).
Cedimat is the most coveted place for work by graduate students. It offers medical residences, post-graduate degrees, and has agreements with universities and medical education programs in the United States and Europe. Marte said that more than 100 specialists have graduated in its 12 post-graduate studies programs, and their graduates are working all around the country and at Cedimat.
The conference this year was dedicated to the memory of late cardiologist Douglas Bournigal. Special guests this year were Anthony Kalloo, Francisco Alvarez Aquino and Bryan Mandell. The speakers included doctors César Herrera, Pedro Roa, Fernando Vidal, Andrés Ureña, Anyeri De Peña, Jorge Marte, Sócrates Bautista, Fernando Contreras, Ángel Gómez, Liliana Jiménez, José Miguel Stefan, José Rafael Yunén and Yovanna Rosich.
29 October 2018
