The State of Mato Grosso is a huge Brazilian state located in the central-west area of Brazil. Considered the biggest site of Americas in terms of biodiversity where more than 126 cities are distributed in over 900,000 km. The State has a wide range of social-economical status, being more developed in its south than the northern area. This configuration implies enormous differences in the health profile of the population as well in the way health care is approached and managed and it has to be considered when thinking about to apply any educational model toward health professionals.

In the last five years, the Mato Grosso government has heavily invested in the primary care reform in the State, adopting the Family Health Program (FHP) supported by the Ministry of Health of Brazil as the major strategy. The FHP is based in health professionals teams composed of at least one physician, one nurse and four to six community health agents (non graduated professionals who live in the community where the team works). Currently dentists are also being incorporated to the Family Health teams (FHT). Each FHT is responsible for a comprehensive approach of around 600 to 1000 families, in media 3,500 people. The State of Mato Grosso has already implemented 156 FHT distributed around the state, some of them located more than 1,500 km far from the capital city of Cuiab where most of the educational programs are developed. The Secretary of Health of Mato Grosso has as its goal at least 200 FHT integrated to the training and educational programs until December 2001. This new strategy of primary care created a large demand for educational program to provide training of the workforce in primary care in the context described above. As part of the whole education proposal for professionals working in primary care in Mato Grosso, we are developing a distance educational program.

In this program, we understand "education" as an active and life-long process, where critical thinking and creativity are fundamental tools to make interventions in the reality of the participants involved in this process. In this way, the major objectives of this program are: to create and implement media to stimulate and to allow the critical use of health information related to the Family Health practice and service organisation; to promote distance technical support for health professionals; to promote distance research orientation; to create media to promote a co-operation and sharing experiences among health professionals and managers; to provide distance courses to the different professionals categories involved in the FHP; to develop and implement the "Tele-practice" (Tele-medicine, Tele-nursing, Tele-dentistry etc.); to develop simulation software of common situations in primary care. The project is planned for development in 20 months and it is organised in three distinct but interrelated phases, being the activities and services started in each phase continued during the whole project developing. Phase I is toward the structuring health information resources and databases, as well to constitute a sort of media to permit their dissemination and socialization. Phase II will be characterized by distance courses using different types of media and distance research orientation. Phase III will be toward the development and implementation of Tele-practice and simulations software.

At the end of the project it is envisaged that the distance educational activities proposed here will be all incorporated to the daily practice of the FHT and managers, what could contribute to the improvement of technical skills and the empowerment of the professionals working in the FHP in Mato Grosso.

The demonstration of the potential of distance education in developing Countries using high technologies would be efficient, desirable, and feasible.

Ernesto Gomes de Azevedo
Avenida Professor Mario Werneck 2444, Apartment 1004
Belo Horizonte / Minas Gerais / Brazil
ZIP CODE: 30.575-180
Phone: (5531) 9983-1588
Email: ernesto_azevedo@uol.com.br

CO-AUTHORS:

Eliane Ignotti;
Elisete Duarte;
Eunice Godoy.
Escola de Saúde Pública do Mato Grosso
Rua Adalto Botelho s/n
Bairro COOPEMA
Cuiab· - Mato Grosso - Brazil
ZIP CODE:78.000-000
Phone: (5565)613-2221
Email: espmt@terra.com.br